Tuesday, 2 October 2012

 First aircraft build by Indian 
not Wright brothers! 

Talpade – The Indian Sanskrit scholar who built and flew a mercury engine aircraft in 1895, 8 years before the Wright brothers! 

Shivkur Bapuji Talpade, flew an unmanned aircraft, eight years before the Wright brothers demonstrated on December 17th 1903 that it was possible for a ‘manned heavier than air machine to fly’. But, in 1895, eight years earlier, the Sanskrit scholar Shivkar Bapuji Talpade had designed a basic aircraft called Marutsakthi (meaning Power of Air) based on Vedic technology documented in ancient Sanskrit manuscripts. His demonstration flight took place before a large audience in the Chowpathy beach of Bombay. The importance of the Wright brothers lies in the fact, that it was a manned flight for a distance of 120 feet and Orville Wright became the first man to fly. But Talpade’s unmanned aircraft flew to a height of 1500 feet before crashing down and the historian Evan Koshtka, has described Talpade as the ‘first creator of an aircraft’.

This historic day in 1895 (unfortunately the actual date is not mentioned in the Kesari newspaper of Pune which covered the event) was witnessed by the famous Indian judge/ nationalist/ Mahadeva Govin-da Ranade and H H Sayaji Rao Gaekwad.

It is important to note that Talpade was no scientist, just a sanskrit scholar who had built his aircraft entirely from the rich treasury ofIndia’s Vedas.

Shivkar Bapuji Talpade was born in 1864 in the locality of Chirabazar at Dukkarwadi in Bombay. He was a scholar of Sanskrit and from his young age was attracted by the Vaimanika Sastra (Aeronautical Science) expounded by the great Indian sage Maharishi Bhardwaja.

Historic documents such as the Vedas and some Indian epics do mention flight and structures termed Vimana’s but nobody seems to have taken them seriously (inspite of claims & rumors that NASA's ion engine is based on the vedic texts). The contents of the book Vimanika Sastra and all the innuendo put together by H Childress and Berlitz, were dismissed as hogwash by many learned scientists. Having read the “the anti-gravity handbook” and the Vaimanika Shastra translation myself, I should agree that both leave a number of new doubts and questions in the reader’s mind rather than answering them. It could be so since the original Sasthra text itself is considered incomplete.

1800-1900 was a period of inventions- People were innovating left and right, at a pace never attained since then. Eventually, two attempts got recorded into the annals of aviation history. One was Santos Dumont of Brazil and the other the Wright brothers of USA. The latter are accorded all the credit today for being pioneers of manned, controlled flight. Dumont’s supporters argued that his 14bis flew for 722 feet in 1906-1907 after his 1901 dirigibles; The Wright brothers did their first 852’ flight in 1903, but more in secret. Brazilians argued that Dumont flew without use of catapults and slopes to aid take off, the Wright brothers did just that. Clement Ader did a self powered flight in 1890; or so it appears, but just 8 inches above the ground. Then there was John Stringfellow’s plane in 1848. The Wright brothers did some more sparsely witnessed flight demonstrations 1903-1906. But was there somebody else before the Wright’s, perhaps? Somebody who did not get his due recognition?

Well, one other person 'purportedly' flew a self powered unmanned plane in 1895. That man was Shivkar Bapuji Talpade. His plane was called ‘MarutSakha’. Reports concluded that he obtained the designs from his Guru Subbaraya Shastri (who compiled Maharishi Bhardwaja’s Vaimanika Shastra – a collection of some parts of the original Vedic period text), that he had his wife supporting him in these design & production endeavors, that the plane flew only a short distance before crashing, that it had a mercury ion engine, that he stopped his efforts after the crash due to paucity of funds, imperial animosity & lack of sponsorship.

The problem with this story is that there is very little to corroborate it except for the two articles, one by Times of India and one by Deccan Herald. There is a third write up linked here.

The Times article states- In 1895 an Indian pioneer flew what is said to be the first Indian plane in the air. The centenary year of the first successful flight, by the Wright brothers, was celebrated from December 17, 2003. But our own pioneer from Mumbai, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, made an aircraft and had flown it eight years earlier. One of Talpade's students, P Satwelkar, has chronicled that his craft called 'Marutsakha'(Friend of the Winds) flew unmanned for a few minutes and came down.


Kesari was a newspaper edited by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in Marathi. Some argue that the very fact that Kesari Bal Gangadhar

himself was editor when this article was printed, gives it complete credibility. Some add that Shivkar Bapuji's craft only flew only to a twenty meter height and crashed within seventeen minutes,

hence was counted largely as a failure but had he been loaned more R&D money he might have gone into the annals of history. Anyway Talpade supposedly lost interest in things after his wife`s death which happened some time after the test flight, and after his own death in 1917 at the age of 53 his relatives sold the machine (in which children of the house used to play) to Rally Brothers, a leading British exporting firm then operating in Mumbai.

Maharaja Sayaji Rao Gaekwad of Baroda was a great supporter of the Sciences in India, and was willing to help Talpade with funds to build his aircraft and the mercury engines.
Talpade passed away in 1916 unhonoured, in his own country. It is said that the remains of the Marutsakthi (the aircraft Tapade built) were ‘sold’ to a British company by Talpade’s relatives

The story of the first Indian to fly a plane thus remains a myth, for lack of further evidence. If somebody has some more concrete data to prove this event, please feel free to provide it.


  1. nice blog very interesting content.....

  2. It's a matter of sorrow his name has been lost in history as a myth. i searched on google i found many news paper cuttings and also this event is discussed on many web sites. is that data is not efficient to prove this ?


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  5. poore vimaan shastra me 32 tareeke ke 500 prakaar ke vimaan banane ke jo maharishi baharadwaj dwara diye gaye hai aur jinko padhkar talpade ji ne pehla vimaan banakar automatically use 1500 ft ki uchaai tak udaaya tha aur ye pehli udaa safalta poorwak poori hui thi

    aur fir ralli brothers jo angrej the unhone iss vimaan ka design liya aur talpade ji ke saath ek samjhauta kiya aur is samjhaute me ralli brothers ne poore vimaan ka design aur model talpade ji se le liya aur waapis london chale gaye aur jo samjhauta hua tha use bhi nakaar diya aur fir wahi design aur drawing america pahuch gayi aur wright brothers ke haathon me aa gayi aur fir wright brothers ne talpade ji ke design aur model se ek vimaan bana liya aur apna naam register kerwa liye us vimaan ko banane me

    talpade ji bahut hi bhole aur seedhe insaan the jinke paas bharpur gyaan tha per chalaaki nahi thi aur america aur angrejo ko sirf ek chalaki hi bahut sahi tareeke se aati hai. unke paas koi gyaan koi aadhaar nahi sirf bharpoor chalaki hai. unhe agar kisika bhi abanaya hua kuch bhi naya mile to wo use apna naam dekar apne dwaara rachit batate hai

    aur aaj hum itihaas me padhte hai ki pehla vimaan wright brothers ne 1903 ko 17 december ko banaya jo ko unse bhi pehle 1895 me bapu ji talpade ne vimaan ko banakar tayar bhi ker liye aur use udaane ka safal parikhan bhi kiya

    ralli brothers ne beimaani se uska saara design aur model talpade ji se liya aur iss tarah vo desodn aur model wright brothers ke paas gaya jiski mada se un logo ne vimaan banaya

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  9. Regret & deplore
    That my india is great and it's proved many times.....
    But then also the foreigners everytime hide the Greatness of india (radio,aeroplane,mathmetics,universal science,solar system science,etc) everything first search and invented by india but they white foreigner hide all and copy all.