The Indian Who Flew A Plane Before The Wright Brothers

ANEKAL SUBBARAYA SHASTRY—Pioneer in the science of Aviation
And
SB. TALPADE —World’s First Creator of an Aircraft.


“Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its fragrance in the desert air”-----Thomas Gray

When I read these immortal lines of the poet in his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” I recollected the life and achievements of two of the greatest scientists of our country who remain unnoticed, unrecognized and unhonoured in their own land of birth even today. One is Anekal Subbaraya Shastry of Bangalore [1866-1940] who pioneered the study of aeronautics in accordance with the magnificent treatise on aeronautics written in Sanskrit by Sage Bharadhwaja thousands of years ago and called ‘Brihad Vaimanika Shastra’. The other is S.B.Talpade [1864-1916] from Bombay who had flown the first unmanned aircraft built by himself called ‘Marut Sakha’ to a height of 1,500 feet in the Chowpathy Beach, Bombay in 1895 before it crashed, eight years before the Wright Brothers flew a manned aircraft in America on 17th December 1903 

Anekal Subbaraya Shastry: Anekal Subbaraya Shastry was born in a village called Tagare in Anekal Taluk, Bangalore in 1866 as the eldest son. His parents were Lakshsamma and Krishna Shastry-- a pious and devout Brahmin couple. Krishna Shastry was an erudite Vedic scholar. He was extremely poor and it was a day- to- day struggle for existence for him to maintain the family. In keeping with the then prevailing tradition, he got Subbaraya married to one girl Nanjamma in Anekal when the boy was just eight years old. Sometime after his marriage, Subbaraya contacted leprosy, considered contagious. Opressed both physically and mentally, he even tried to commit suicide. One day, sometime in 1890 at the age of 24 years he left the house and moved out to an unknown destination without informing any one. He roamed from place to place and finally landed on the slopes of a thick forest in Kolar district. He lived wandering in the forest for nine years, subsisting on whatever he could get in the form of vegetables, fruits etc available in that forest area.

Extremely exhausted and thirsty, one day he went to a river side to drink water. Suddenly he felt giddy and lost consciousness and fell into the river. When he regained consciousness and woke up, he found himself on the banks of the river at a distance in the midst of beautiful natural surroundings. He saw a great sage in front of him who blessed him. This blessing had the effect of curing Shastry of his leprosy .Thereafter he spent quite sometime in the company of the sage. It was this unknown sage who initiated Shastry into Vedantic wisdom and taught him the famous Vedantic Treatise on aeronautics “Brihad Vaimanika Shastra” of Sage Bharadwaja, in addition to teaching him the secrets of Shastras like ‘Bhautika Kala Nidhi’ and Jala Tantra. 

The Brihad Vaimanika Shastra is monumental treatise on aeronautics written in Sanskrit thousands of years ago by Sage Bharadwaja. It consists of 3,000 verses [shlokas] and 500 sutras [aphorisms] like grammarian Panini’s Ashtadhayi. The very first sutra defines an aircraft when it states ‘Vegasamyath Vimanah Andajam iti’ which means 
‘An aircraft is like a flying bird’. The treatise describes in detail the construction and manufacture of an aircraft with all the relevant drawings, different types of aircrafts, metals used in the manufacture, varieties of machines and yantras required etc including details of dress to be worn by the pilot while flying etc. A condensed version of the treatise is available in the Oriental Library, Baroda.

After Shastry was given sufficient instructions on the Vimana Shastra and allied sciences, he was asked by the sage to return home and renew his life as a householder. In keeping with the advice, Shastry returned to Anekal and spent the next 25 years of his life in Anekal. It is only in the last few years that he shifted to Bangalore. When Shastry’s name and achievements spread by word of mouth, several leading scientists of the country such as Jagadish Chandra Bose, Sir C.V.Raman went to Anekal and got enlightened by Shastry’s Vedic knowledge on aeronautics. It is learnt that it was at the instance of Sir J.C.Bose that Shastry agreed to share this rare knowledge and gave some details about his career and the knowledge that he had acquired from the sage. As he was not himself not well read nor did he write down anything, he dictated whatever he had learnt to one Gotur Venkatachala Sharma who was an erudite Sanskrit scholar. Sharma took down all these dictations during a five year period between 1918 and 1923. In the early seventies, one G.R.Josyer of the International Academy of Sanskrit in Mysore brought out the English translation of Sharma’s book.. In his introduction to the book, Josyer confirms that Shastry dictated the treatise to Gotur Venkatachala Sharma.

Anekal Subbaraya Shastry passed away in 1940—unrecognized, unhonoured and unsung in his own motherland.

S.B.Talpade: The credit for putting India on the top in the history of world aviation belongs to a Bombay based scientist by name S.B.Talpade. He was the first to fly an unmanned aircraft to a height of 1,500 feet before it crashed. This feat was achieved by him at the Chowpathy Beach, Bombay in 1895, eight years before the launch of the world’s first manned aircraft into space in America on 17th December 1903. This magnificent feat was witnessed by no less celebrities than the Maharaja of Baroda Sayyaji Rao Gaekwad and Justice M.G.Ranade, well known freedom fighter and nationalist.

Shivkar Bapuji Talpade was born in 1864 in a locality known as Dukkurwadi in Bombay. He hailed from a Maharashtrian Brahmin family. He was a well read scholar in Sanskrit, well versed in most of the Sanskrit scriptures. Right from his younger days he used to evince a lot of interest in flying and flight mechanics. When he heard about the great aviation treatise ‘Brihad Vaimanika Shastra’ of Sage Bharadwaja, he cherished a desire to study it under a scholar who could teach him about it. At that time Anekal Subbaraya Shastry was the only known person who was knowledgeable about it and who could teach. Talpade was keen on going to Shastry at Anekal and study. But since he hailed from a poor family he could not afford it. Fortunately he came in contact with the Maharajah of Baroda, himself a great supporter of sciences in India. The Maharajah volunteered to assist Talpade in the acquisition of this rare knowledge. Talpade’s joy knew no bounds when he felt he could realize his long cherished desire to fly an aircraft. He wasted no time in getting lessons from Shastry and finally built his own aircraft in Bombay as per the guidelines from the Vaimanika Shastra. 

The D-Day finally arrived sometime in 1895 when the first flying machine built by Talpade and named “Marut Sakha’ [Friend of the Wind] took off from ground before a large scholarly audience at the Chowpathy Beach in Bombay. The witnesses to this rare event included the famous nationalist and freedom fighter Justice M.G.Ranade and the Maharajah of Baroda. The aircraft took off to a height of 1,500 feet before it crashed. The event was reported with pride and jubilations by the Marathi newspaper from Poona ‘Kesari’ founded by Lokamanya Bala Gangadhar Tilak. Talpade was profusely congratulated by Justice Ranade and the Maharajah of Baroda. 

However, the success of the Indian scientists was not liked by the British Government who arrested Talpade on some flimsy grounds. However Talpade was soon released due to the intervention of some influential leaders. The British Government also warned of dire consequences such as withholding the Privy Purse to the Maharaja of Baroda, if he continued to assist Talpade. In the meanwhile, Talpade lost his wife and was not in a frame of mind to continue his work with no one to back him up. It is learnt that with a view to discharging the loans he had raised towards his dream project, Talpade had to sell the salvage materials of ‘Marut Sakha’ to a British firm by name Raleigh Bros. Thus ended the saga of a glorious beginning on a sad note.

With a view to giving wide publicity to the glorious achievements of S.B.Talpade and emphasize the importance of Vedic wisdom even in sciences, Several Indian intellectuals and scholars got together and honoured Talpade with the title ‘Vidya Prakasha Pradeep”.

B.M.N.Murthy

Dial a priest !

Now, dial a priest for the pooja at home

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/now-dial-a-priest-for-the-pooja-at-home/article6044739.ece?homepage=true 

The organisation also conducts poojas in other States through their priest network. 

Astro Ved also offers the service through a website, at Rs. 500 - Rs. 22, 000

Pizzas and call taxis aren’t the only things that you can order over the phone and get delivered at your doorstep now — priests too are just a call away.

Gone are the days when one had to scout temples or consult friends for getting a priest to perform rituals at home. An organisation called Astro Ved offers the services of a priest through the website www.priestservices.com. People can also dial a priest by calling their customer care numbers: 9500095649/9600007573/9677299388.

“We started the service two years ago. There are six priests with us as of now and we receive at least ten calls a day asking for a priest to perform rituals such as housewarming, birth ceremony and ancestral rituals, among others,” says Ramu Karnan, assistant general manager of the organisation.

Astrology teams also offer the service of preparing horoscopes once a customer provides their birth details, and suggest rituals to solve their problems. “People can also customise their poojas according to their need. But we do not compromise on the schedule or the products that are needed,” S. Prema Raja, the chief priest, explains.

The service is priced from Rs. 500 to Rs. 22,000 and above. “The cost varies according to the venue of the pooja. Everything, right from bricks to prasadam, is arranged by us. We also click pictures of the function for the customer. We take feedback from them a couple of days after the function,” says Mr. Ramu Karnan.

The organisation also conducts poojas in other States through their priest network. “There is a huge demand in Andhra Pradesh and Bangalore. We also train priests who left their occupation due to lack of income. There were few in Kumbakonam who became drivers. Now they are employed with us,” says Mr. Prema Raja.

The priests with Astro Ved earn around Rs. 20,000 per month now, against little or no income earlier. “We recruit people who have good knowledge. We ensure that the customer is satisfied. There are also plans to come out with a mobile application,” says Mr. Ramu Karnan.

Nadella, Jai Ho! Satyameva Jayate!!

Jaipur Foot

Identifying raagas is fun and simple

Human liver from stem cells!

Right place, right time!

Lasik

Way to go!

My math teacher!

http://pksrinivasan.com/index.php 

Lessons from a frugal innovator

Health care in India

Lessons from a frugal innovator

The rich world’s bloated health-care systems can learn from India’s entrepreneurs

Tom Pietrasik

ENTER the main cardiac operating-room at Bangalore’s Wockhardt hospital on a typical morning, and you will find a patient on the operating table with a screen hanging between his head and chest. On a recent visit the table was occupied by a middle-aged Indian man whose serene look suggested that he was ready for the operation to come. Asked how he was, he smiled and answered in Kannada that he felt fine. Only when you stand on a stool to look over the screen do you realise that his chest cavity has already been cut open.

As the patient was chatting away, Vivek Jawali and his team had nearly completed his complex heart bypass. Because such “beating heart” surgery causes little pain and does not require general anaesthesia or blood thinners, patients are back on their feet much faster than usual. This approach, pioneered by Wockhardt, an Indian hospital chain, has proved so safe and successful that medical tourists come to Bangalore from all over the world.

This is just one of many innovations in health care that have been devised in India. Its entrepreneurs are channelling the country’s rich technological and medical talent towards frugal approaches that have much to teach the rich world’s bloated health-care systems. Dr Jawali is feted today as a pioneer, but he remembers how Western colleagues ridiculed him for years for advocating his inventive “awake surgery”. He thinks that snub reflects an innate cultural advantage enjoyed by India.

Unlike the hidebound health systems of the rich world, he says, “in our country’s patient-centric health system you must innovate.” This does not mean adopting every fancy new piece of equipment. Over the years he has rejected surgical robots and “keyhole surgery” kit because the costs did not justify the benefits. Instead, he has looked for tools and techniques that spare resources and improve outcomes.

Shivinder Singh, head of Fortis, a rival hospital chain based in New Delhi, says that most of the new, expensive imaging machines are only a little better than older models. Meanwhile, vast markets for poorer patients go unserved. “We got out of this arms race a few years ago,” he says. Fortis now promises only that its scanners are “world class”, not the newest.

Mr Singh is not alone in thinking that many firms in the rich world are looking at innovation the wrong way. Paul Yock, head of the bio-design laboratory at Stanford University, which develops medical devices, argues that medical-technology giants have “looked at need, but been blind to cost.” Amid growing concern about runaway health spending, he thinks the industry can find inspiration in India.

Poverty, geography and poor infrastructure mean that India faces perhaps the world’s heaviest disease burden, ranging from infectious diseases, the traditional scourge of the poor, to diseases of affluence such as diabetes and hypertension. The public sector has been overwhelmed, which is not surprising considering how little India’s government spends on health as a share of national income (see chart). Accordingly, nearly four-fifths of all health services are supplied by private firms and charities—a higher share than in any other big country.

In the past that was more a reflection of the state’s failure than the dynamism of entrepreneurs, but this is changing fast. Technopak Healthcare, a consulting firm, expects spending on health care in India to grow from $40 billion in 2008 to $323 billion in 2023. In part, that is the result of the growing affluence of India’s emerging middle classes. Another cause is the nascent boom in health insurance, now offered both by private firms and, in some cases, by the state. In addition, the government has recently liberalised the industry, easing restrictions on lending and foreign investment in health care, encouraging public-private partnerships and offering tax breaks for health investments in smaller cities and rural areas.

Cheaper and smarter

This has attracted a wave of investment from some of India’s biggest corporate groups, including Ranbaxy (the generic-drugs pioneer behind Fortis) and Reliance (one of India’s biggest conglomerates). The happy collision of need and greed has produced a cauldron of innovation, as Indian entrepreneurs have devised new business models. Some just set out to do things cheaply, but others are more radical, and have helped India leapfrog the rich world.

For years India’s private-health providers, such as Apollo Hospitals, focused on the affluent upper classes, but they are now racing down the pyramid. Vishal Bali, Wockhardt’s boss, plans to take advantage of tax breaks to build hospitals in small and medium-sized cities (which, in India, means those with up to 3m inhabitants). Prathap Reddy, Apollo’s founder, plans to do the same. He thinks he can cut costs in half for patients: a quarter saved through lower overheads, and another quarter by eliminating travel to bigger cities.

Columbia Asia, a privately held American firm with over a dozen hospitals across Asia, is also making a big push into India. Rick Evans, its boss, says his investors left America to escape over-regulation and the political power of the medical lobby. His model involves building no-frills hospitals using standardised designs, connected like spokes to a hub that can handle more complex ailments. His firm offers modestly priced services to those earning $10,000-20,000 a year within wealthy cities, thereby going after customers overlooked by fancier chains. Its small hospital on the fringes of Bangalore lacks a marble foyer and expensive imaging machines—but it does have fully integrated health information-technology (HIT) systems, including electronic health records (EHRs).

New competitors are also emerging. A recent report from Monitor, a consultancy, points to LifeSpring Hospitals, a chain of small maternity hospitals around Hyderabad. This for-profit outfit offers normal deliveries attended by private doctors for just $40 in its general ward, and Caesarean sections for about $140—as little as one-fifth of the price at the big private hospitals. It has cut costs with a basic approach: it has no canteens and outsources laboratory tests and pharmacy services.

It also achieves economies of scale by attracting large numbers of patients using marketing. Monitor estimates that its operating theatres accommodate 22-27 procedures a week, compared with four to six in other private clinics. LifeSpring’s doctors perform four times as many operations a month as their counterparts do elsewhere—and, crucially, get better results as a result of high volumes and specialisation. Cheap and cheerful really can mean better.

But there is more to India’s approach than cutting costs. Its health-care providers also make better use of HIT. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, fewer than 20% of doctors’ surgeries in America use HIT. In contrast, according to Technopak, nearly 60% of Indian hospitals do so. And instead of grafting technology onto existing, inefficient processes, as often happens in America, Indian providers build their model around it. Apollo’s integrated approach to HIT has enabled the chain to increase efficiency while cutting medical errors and labour. EHRs and drug records zip between hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, and its systems also handle patient registration and billing. Apollo is already selling its expertise to American hospitals.

Eye on the prize

A casual visitor to Madurai, a vibrant medieval-temple town in southern India, would not think it was a hotbed of innovation. And yet that is exactly what you will find at Aravind, the world’s biggest eye-hospital chain, based in the town. There are perhaps 12m blind people in India, with most cases arising from treatable or preventable causes such as cataracts. Rather than rely on government handouts or charity, Aravind’s founders use a tiered pricing structure that charges wealthier patients more (for example, for fancy meals or air-conditioned rooms), letting the firm cross-subsidise free care for the poorest.

Aravind also benefits from its scale. Its staff screen over 2.7m patients a year via clinics in remote areas, referring 285,000 of them for surgery at its hospitals. International experts vouch that the care is good, not least because Aravind’s doctors perform so many more operations than they would in the West that they become expert. Furthermore, the staff are rotated to deal with both paying and non-paying patients so there is no difference in quality. Monitor’s new report argues that Aravind’s model does not just depend on pricing, scale, technology or process, but on a clever combination of all of them.

C.K. Prahalad and other management gurus trumpet examples like Aravind, but do the rich countries accept that they could learn from India? Unsurprisingly, some reject the notion that America’s model is broken. William Tauzin, head of America’s pharmaceutical lobby, warns that regulatory efforts to cut costs could stifle life-saving innovation. Sandra Peterson of Bayer, a German drugs and devices giant, stoutly defends the industry’s record. She argues that overall cost increases mask how medical devices, “like cars or personal computers, give better value for the money over time.” Diabetes monitors and pacemakers have improved dramatically in the past 20 years and have fallen in price—but costs have gone up because they are now being used by more patients.

But those examples are exceptions. Many studies show that America’s spending on health care is soaring, yet its medical outcomes remain mediocre. Mark McClellen of the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank, says that a big problem is the overuse of technology. Whether or not a scan is needed, the system usually pays if a doctor orders it—and the scan might help defend the doctor against a malpractice claim. “The root cause is not greed, but tremendous technological progress imposed upon a fractured health system,” says Thomas Lee of Partners Community HealthCare, a health provider in Boston.

Dr McClellen, a former head of America’s Food and Drug Administration, points out that other innovative industries often sell new products at a loss, and recoup their investments later. In genuinely competitive industries, innovators are rarely rewarded with the “cost plus” reimbursements demanded by medical-device makers for their gold-plated gizmos.

That is why Stanford’s Dr Yock wants to turn innovation upside down. He has extended his bio-design programme to India, in part to instil an understanding of the benefits of frugality in his students. He believes that India’s combination of poverty and outstanding medical and engineering talents will produce a world-class medical-devices industry. Tim Brown, the head of Ideo, a design consultancy, agrees. In the past, he notes, health bosses thought all devices had to be Rolls-Royces or Ferraris. But cost matters, too. Pointing to another recent example of India’s frugal engineering, he says: “In health care, as in life, there is need for both Ferraris and Tata Nanos.”

SJ no more!

Apple's Steve Jobs Is Dead

By YUKARI IWATANI KANE

Steven P. Jobs, the Apple Inc. chairman and co-founder who pioneered the personal computer industry and changed the way people think about technology, died Wednesday.

Associated Press

Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds up an Apple iPhone at the MacWorld Conference in San Francisco, in this Jan. 9, 2007 file photo.

"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

His family, in a separate statement, said Mr. Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family...We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief."

During his more than three decade-long career, Mr. Jobs transformed Silicon Valley as he helped turn the once sleepy expanse of fruit orchards into the technology industry's innovation center. In addition to laying the groundwork for the modern high-tech industry alongside other pioneers like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, Mr. Jobs proved the appeal of well-designed intuitive products over the sheer power of technology itself and shifted the way consumers interact with technology in an increasingly digital world.

Unlike those men, however, the most productive chapter in Mr. Jobs' career occurred near the end of his life, when a nearly unbroken string of innovative and wildly successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad fundamentally changed the PC, electronics and digital media industries. The way he marketed and sold those products through savvy advertising campaigns and its retail stores, in the meanwhile, helped turn the company into a pop culture icon.

At the beginning of that phase, Mr. Jobs once described his philosophy as trying to make products that were at "the intersection of art and technology." In doing so, he turned Apple into the world's most valuable company.

Mr. Jobs was 56 years old. After exhibiting significant weight loss in mid-2008, he took a nearly six month medical leave of absence in 2009, during which he received a liver transplant. He took another medical leave of absence in mid-January without explanation before stepping down as chief executive in August.

Mr. Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene, and four children.

Although his achievements in technology alone were immense, Mr. Jobs played an equally groundbreaking role in entertainment. He turned Apple into the largest retailer of music and helped popularize computer-animated films as the financier and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which he later sold to Walt Disney Co. He was a key figure in changing the way people used the Internet and how they consumed music, TV shows, movies, books, disrupting industries in the process.

Mr. Jobs also pulled off one of the most remarkable comebacks in modern business history, returning to Apple after an 11-year absence during which he was largely written off as a has-been and then reviving the then-struggling company by introducing products such as the iMac all-in-one computer, iPod music player and iTunes digital music store.

The company produces $65.2 billion a year in revenue compared with $7.1 billion in its business year ending September 1997. Apple has become one of the world's premier designers of consumer-electronics devices, dropping the "computer" in its name in January 2007 to underscore its expansion beyond PCs.

Although Mr. Jobs officially handed over the reins of the company to long-time deputy Tim Cook in August, his death nevertheless raises a high-stakes question for Apple of how the company—which has been in the vanguard of technological creativity for most of the past decade—will sustain its success without his vision and guidance. Other icons of American capitalism, including Walt Disney, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., experienced some transitional woes but eventually managed to thrive after their charismatic founders passed on.

But few companies of that stature have shown such an acute dependence on their founder, or lost the founder at the peak of his career. Several years after Mr. Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, the company began a steady decline that saw it drift to the margins of the computer industry. That slide was reversed only after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997.

Mr. Jobs also leaves behind innumerable tales about his mercurial management style, such as his habit of calling employees or their ideas "dumb" when he didn't like something. He was even more combative against foes like Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. When Adobe Systems Inc. waged a campaign against Apple for not supporting Adobe's Flash video format on its iPhones and iPads in April 2010, Mr. Jobs wrote a 1,600 word essay about why the software was outdated and inadequate for mobile devices.

The CEO maintained uncompromising standards about the company's hardware and software, demanding "insanely great" aesthetics and ease of use from the moment a consumer walked into one of Apple's stylish stores. His attention to the smallest details in the development and design process were instrumental in shaping some of the most distinctive features of Apple's products, while his meticulously planned onstage demonstrations helped fuel excitement that was unmatched by his peers.

At event after event to introduce new Apple products, Mr. Jobs often puckishly proclaimed "There is one more thing" before revealing the most significant news at the very end of a speech. He enforced strict secrecy among Apple employees, a strategy that he believed heightened anticipation for upcoming Apple products.

Mr. Jobs, the adopted son of a family in Palo Alto, Calif., was born on Feb. 24, 1955. A college dropout, he established his reputation early on as a tech innovator when at 21 years old, he and friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Inc. in the Jobs family garage in 1976. Mr. Jobs chose the name, in part, because he was a Beatles fan and admired the group's Apple records label, according to the book "Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders" by Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Carlton.

The pair came out with the Apple II in 1977, a groundbreaking computer that was relatively affordable and designed for the mass market consumer rather than for hobbyists. The product went on to become one of the first commercially successful personal computers, making the company $117 million in annual sales by the time of Apple's initial public offering in 1980. The IPO instantly made Mr. Jobs a multimillionaire.

Not all of Mr. Jobs's early ideas paid off. Apple's Apple III and Lisa computers that debuted in 1980 and 1983 were flops. But the distinctive all-in-one Macintosh--foreshadowed in a ground-breaking TV ad inspired by George Orwell's novel "1984" that famously only aired once -- would set the standard for the design of modern computer operating systems, in which users point and click on icons with a mouse rather than typing in commands.

Even then, Mr. Jobs was a stickler about design details. Bruce Tognazzini, a former user-interface expert at Apple who joined the company in 1978, once said that Mr. Jobs was adamant than the keyboard not include "up", "down," "right" and "left" keys that allow users to move the cursor around their computer screens.

Mr. Jobs's pursuit for aesthetic beauty sometimes bordered on the extreme. George Crow, an Apple engineer in the 1980s and again from 1998 to 2005, recalls how Mr. Jobs wanted to make even the inside of computers beautiful. On the original Macintosh PC, Mr. Crow says Mr. Jobs wanted the internal wiring to be in the colors of Apple's early rainbow logo. Mr. Crow says he eventually convinced Mr. Jobs it was an unnecessary expense.

Many ideas in the Macintosh came from a visit in 1979 to Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research, where Mr. Jobs saw a machine called the Xerox Alto that had a crude graphical user interface and a mouse. The episode underscored his recurring role as a refiner and popularizer of existing inventions.

"Picasso had a saying, 'Good artists copy. Great artists steal,'" Mr. Jobs said in a PBS documentary on the computer industry from the mid-1990s. "I've been shameless about stealing great ideas."

Even in his appearance, Mr. Jobs seemed to cultivate an image more like that of an artist than a corporate executive. In public, he rarely deviated from an outfit consisting of Levis jeans, a black mock turtleneck and New Balance running shoes.

As Apple expanded, Mr. Jobs decided to bring in a more experienced manager to lead the company. He recruited John Sculley from Pepsi Co. to be Apple CEO in 1983, famously overcoming Mr. Sculley's initial reluctance by asking the executive if he just wanted to sell "sugar water to kids" or help change the world.

After Apple fell into a subsequent slump, a leadership struggle led its board's decision to back Mr. Sculley and fire Mr. Jobs two years later at the age of 30. "What can I say – I hired the wrong guy," Mr. Jobs brooded in the same PBS documentary. "He destroyed everything I had spent ten years working for."

Mr. Jobs then created NeXT Inc., a closely watched startup that in 1988 introduced a distinctive black desktop computer with advanced software that was initially targeted at the academic computing market. But the machine was hobbled by its exorbitant price tag and some key design decisions, including its use of an optical disk drive and a Motorola Inc. microprocessor at a time when Intel Corp. chips and floppy drives had become the norm.

NeXT eventually stopped selling hardware and failed to make money as a software company. But its operating system would become a foundation for OS X, the software backbone of today's Macs, after Apple purchased NeXT for $400 million in December 1996.

In 1986, using part of his fortune from Apple, Mr. Jobs paid filmmaker George Lucas $10 million to acquire the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. The company he formed out of those assets, Pixar Animation Studios, first sold hardware, then software, and later turned to feature films. Pixar went on to create a string of computer-animated hits, from "Toy Story" to 2008's "Wall-E." Mr. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in January 2006 in a $7.4 billion deal that gave him a Disney board seat and made him the entertainment company's largest shareholder.

Meanwhile, Apple began foundering. Computers using Intel chips and Microsoft software grew to dominate the market, a trend that accelerated after Microsoft's Windows emulated many elements of the Mac's visual interface.

Apple, by contrast, had to finance both hardware and software development internally. Fewer developers of application programs created products to make the Macintosh more useful. Apple would eventually decide to license its operating system to other hardware companies, but it was too late to reverse the swing to Windows-based machines.

By 1997, Apple had racked up nearly $2 billion in losses in two years, its shares were at record lows and it was on its third CEO--Gil Amelio--in four years. Eight months after the deal to buy NeXT in December 1996, Mr. Amelio was ousted and Mr. Jobs appointed interim CEO, a title that became permanent in January 2000. One former Apple employee recalls Mr. Jobs joking soon after he returned that "the lunatics have taken over the asylum and we can do anything we want."

Mr. Jobs, who was given a salary of $1 a year along with options to Apple stock, made a series of changes that started paying off quickly. He ended the nascent software licensing program that created Mac clones, killed the struggling Newton handheld computer and trimmed a confusing array of Mac models to a handful of systems focused on the consumer market.

In May 1998, he introduced the iMac, an unusual one-piece computer that sported a colorful casing in translucent turquoise and gray. The popular machine--which sent competitors scrambling to improve their own designs—was embodied by a bold ad campaign that featured the phrase "Think Different," with the picture of one of Mr. Jobs's heroes, such as Albert Einstein and Muppets creator Jim Henson.

While shareholders cheered the changes, Mr. Jobs flexed his power on Apple's Cupertino, Calif., campus. Within months of taking over, he had replaced four of the five top executive positions with former NeXT underlings. He issued emails forbidding employees on the famously laid-back campus to bring pets to the office, smoke even in parking lots, and threatening to fire anyone caught leaking company documents.

One personal assistant became a target when he failed to arrange the installation of a high-speed digital data line to Mr. Jobs's office fast enough to suit the interim CEO. The worker said Mr. Jobs fired him for the delay, but rescinded the firing the next day after he had cooled down. (The worker ended up resigning soon afterwards).

Apple had some stumbles during Mr. Jobs's second coming, including a cube-shaped Macintosh that failed to catch on and was scrapped in 2001. The failure was one reason that Apple posted a quarterly loss and warned it would miss estimates several times in 2000 and 2001.

But big hits followed. In 2001, Apple introduced a PowerBook laptop made from titanium, a metal more frequently found in fighter airplanes. The same year, it introduced the iPod, which transformed digital music players with features such as its smooth shape and DJ-like wheel for navigating through songs. As of Sept. 2010, Apple had sold more than 275 million iPod devices since its introduction, and it has more than 70% market share in the market for digital music players.

A key differentiator was the iTunes Music Store, opened in 2003. At the time, the music industry was largely sitting on the sidelines of the digital revolution, badly wounded by illegal downloads but unable to agree on an easy, inexpensive way to sell songs online. But Mr. Jobs helped convince major record labels to sell recordings for 99 cents each, along with antipiracy restrictions that most consumers found acceptable.

The store, which has sold more than ten billion songs, became the largest music retailer in the U.S. in 2008. It also became an incentive for consumers to buy iPods because, for much of its history, songs from the iTunes store could only be downloaded to Apple's music player and not devices made by other companies.

At the same time, Mr. Jobs was building a deep bench of executives. He recruited former Compaq Computer Corp. executive Tim Cook in the late 1990s to straighten Apple's operations and promoted him over time to chief operating officer. Ron Johnson, senior vice president of Apple retail, was hired from Target Corp. in 2000 to launch Apple's stores worldwide. Apple's lead industrial designer Jonathan Ive took charge of the physical look-and-feel of the company's products and is said to share in Mr. Jobs's sensibilities about design.

In 2004, Mr. Jobs had to lean on this bench when he disclosed that he had had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. Apple revealed the procedure in early August 2004, but a person familiar with the situation said Mr. Jobs first learned of the tumor during a routine abdominal scan nine months earlier. The board and Mr. Jobs said nothing to Apple shareholders as the Apple executive, during that time, dealt with the tumor through changes to his diet, the person said.

In June 2007, Mr. Jobs made another splash when Apple introduced the iPhone. The cellphone pushed the envelope in the mobile phone market with features that included a touch-screen interface, allowing tricks such as blowing up images by spreading a thumb and finger on the phone's surface.

Mr. Jobs was typically hands on in the creation of the iPhone. People familiar with the matter say the CEO was the one that made a decision to change the screen of the iPhone from plastic to glass after he unveiled the product at the Macworld trade show in 2007. The iPhone team scrambled to procure glass that would meet his exacting standards, so the devices could be manufactured in time for the launch, which took place just seven months later.

Despite skepticism about Apple's ability to enter an already-competitive market dominated by the likes of Research in Motion Ltd.'s Blackberry devices, Apple quickly became a force in the mobile phone market, selling 92 million iPhones as of December 2010. The product kicked into a higher gear earlier this year when Apple said it would begin selling iPhones through Verizon Wireless in addition to carrier AT&T.

Last year, Mr. Jobs also unveiled the iPad tablet computer to great fanfare, billing it as "magical and revolutionary". In the first nine months of the product's release, Apple sold 14.8 million iPads as consumers snapped them up to use as a casual multimedia device for activities such as emailing, watching video and reading. People who work closely with Mr. Jobs said the project was so important to him that he was intimately involved in its planning even while recovering from his 2009 liver transplant.

A major selling point for both the iPhone and iPad has been the App Store, which allows developers to easily make application programs that users can download for free or for a small fee; the store meanwhile has seen more than seven billion downloads as of the end of 2010.

One cloud to Mr. Jobs's reign came in 2006 when Apple also disclosed that an internal investigation had discovered that stock option grants to Apple executives between 1997 and 2002-- including to Mr. Jobs-- were improperly dated. Apple became the most high-profile technology company caught up in a broad series of options backdating scandals that helped inflate the profits executives made from their stock awards.

Apple later disclosed that Mr. Jobs helped select the favorable option dates, but denied that he did anything wrong since he didn't understand the accounting implications of his actions. Apple's investigation ended up blaming two ex-Apple executives – former general counsel Nancy Heinen and former chief financial officer Fred Anderson – for their role in the backdating. Both were later charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission. They ended up settling the charges. Mr. Jobs was never charged with any wrongdoing.

Those who knew Mr. Jobs say that one reason why he was able to keep innovating was because he didn't dwell on past accomplishments or legacy but kept looking ahead and demanded that employees do the same. Hitoshi Hokamura, a former Apple employee, recalls how an old Apple I that was displayed by the company cafeteria quietly disappeared after Mr. Jobs returned in the late 1990s.

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose," Mr. Jobs said in a commencement speech at Stanford University in June 2005, almost a year after he was diagnosed with cancer.

Coimbatore

Memories of Coimbatore - Where science thrived...

R. Subbayyan on G.D. Naidu's exhibitions, playing gilli danda with Greek refugees and watching Thyagaraja Bhagavathar in action at Valankulam

He was soft-spoken, lean and dressed in a veshti. Big or small, he would respond to all kinds of questions raised by students. When I was a kid, it was G.D. Naidu who planted the seed of engineering in me. I grew up attending the many Science exhibitions he held. His exhibitions always had interesting objects. There was a coffee-vending machine in one of them. All you had to do was insert a coin into the machine and you would get a cup of coffee! I was fascinated by it and asked him how it worked. He explained how levers operated inside to mix the decoction, sugar, milk and water. A shaving blade invented by him, an automatic ticket dispenser, illustrations on the harmful effects of cigarette smoke…G.D. Naidu's exhibitions were visited by students all over the city.

We lived in R.S. Puram. The area was full of karuvelam trees. It was during World War II. Refugees from Greece were sheltered in hostels in the Forest College campus. Everyday, they would walk all the way to the South end of D.B. Road to buy fruit and vegetables — there were no shops in between. Shopkeepers would take the exact amount and return the rest if the Greeks unintentionally gave them excess cash. People were honest and full of integrity.

Sometimes, we played football with the Greeks. We also taught them gilli danda, popular with boys back then. Football matches were played at Irwin Stadium in Coronation Park (now VOC Park). Since most of us travelled by foot, we would go home really late if there was a match happening in the evening. It was Diwan Bahadur C.S. Rathna Sabapathy Mudaliyar, the municipality chairman, who installed street-lamps in D.B. Road and brought drinking water from Siruvani to Coimbatore. Diwan Bahadur Road (D.B. Road) and Rathna Sabapathy Puram (R.S. Puram) were named after him.

We would watch movies in Swamy Hall on Variety Hall Road. A tharai ticket there cost one anna. For two annas, you got to sit on a bench. The chair ticket was four annas. There used to be a restaurant on a lane off Avanashi Road with a board saying ‘Man paandathil seidha divyamaana saappadu', for two annas.

The lakes in the city were pristine. People would bathe in their waters. When I was a little boy, I remember watching the shooting of the film ‘Sivakavi' on Valankulam Road. M.K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar who played the hero had to push a man into the lake for the scene!

Those days, college students and teachers were more like friends. During my tenure as the principal of PSG College of Technology, I watched movies and played basketball with students in the evenings. Once, teachers and students manually installed a basketball pole in college. We also designed and constructed an automatic score board.

Deepavali was celebrated in the college grounds, crackers and all. But, when in class, we were very strict.

We had once invited Kavignar Kannadasan for a function of the Thamizh Mandram in college. Though he came late, he spoke for an hour to an audience of students delirious with excitement. In 1975, we installed the first computer centre in our college. The TDC 312, a huge machine, processed results for Madras University. Why, it even did the payroll for many companies, including LIC!

As a principal, I often did the rounds of college. On one such evening, I noticed a group of students playing cards in the hostel. “Look, it's the princi da!” whispered one of them who had seen me coming. By the time another student replied, “It can't be him da, he's probably asleep by now,” I was right behind them!

In 1954, I came across a young clerk in our college's canteen. A.V. Varadharajan was a bright kid with good marks in school. G.R.Damodaran offered him a seat in the college. We didn't know back then that one day, he would grow up to be an industrialist of repute. That he would be instrumental in the construction of the CODISSIA Trade Fair Complex in the city.

Car of the future

Driverless car navigates Berlin streets

It can talk, see, drive and no longer needs a human being to control it by remote. The car of the future completely computer-controlled is on the streets of Berlin.

All summer, researchers from the city’s Free University have been testing the automobile around the German capital.

The vehicle manoeuvres through traffic on its own using a sophisticated combination of devices, including a computer, electronics and a precision satellite navigation system in the trunk, a camera in the front, and laser scanners on the roof and around the front and rear bumpers.

“The vehicle can recognize other cars on the road, pedestrians, buildings and trees up to 70 meters around it and even see if the traffic lights ahead are red or green and react accordingly,” Raul Rojas, the head of the university’s research group for artificial intelligence, told reporters at a presentation on Friday.

“In fact, the car’s recognition and reaction to its environment is much faster than a human being’s reaction.”

The scientists have worked on their research car, a Volkswagen Passat worth $551,800 with lots of built-in special technology, for four years.

Several other groups have also been working on such technology recently, notably Google, which has been testing a robotic Toyota Prius in Nevada.

“There’s a big trend for completely computer-controlled cars many companies and research centers in several countries are working on it and it is hard to say, who’s got the most-developed vehicle at the moment,” Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, a professor for automotive economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Mr. Dudenhoeffer estimated that with the technology advances, it could only take another decade for the fully automatic cars to start becoming available for consumers. “Even today’s cars are often partially computer-controlled, for example when it comes to parking or emergency brakes.”

However, he said, that besides the technological issues, the legal challenges would be another issue that needed to be regulated — “Who will be responsible when there’s an accident the owner or the passenger of the computer-controlled car or the company that produced it?”

“However, all in all, one can definitely say that computer-controlled cares will be much safer than human drivers,” Mr. Dudenhoeffer said. “Especially if you keep in mind that most of today’s accidents are caused by human error.”

In Berlin, the university researchers received a special permit from the city’s security and safety controllers in June to use it in regular traffic under the condition that a safety driver sits behind the steering wheel, even if he doesn’t touch anything not the steering wheel, gas pedals nor brakes.

On a special testing ground, the team has also been allowed to let the car run without anyone on board.

“This kind of technology is the future of mobility,” Mr. Rojas said, who had a more conservative estimate than Mr. Dudenhoeffer, saying that it may be 30 to 40 years before they become available to the average consumer.

The key to the automobile’s intelligence is in the way the computer program runs.

“In the beginning with had trouble with the robotic driving style of the car,” said Mr. Rojas. “But we’ve worked on the programming and now its driving style is as smooth as a human being.”

Mr. Rojas estimates that once the technology specifically the sensors gets less expensive, such cars will eventually conquer the roads.

“It is similar to the beginnings of the computers 40 years ago, only research labs could afford computers, now everybody is walking around with a computer in his pocket.”

Ideally, the car will respond to orders by remote control, for example on an iPad or an iPhone. With a click or a touch, the passenger can call the car to his personal location and then order the car to drop him off at his desired destination.

“This kind of car is actually perfect for car sharing,” said Mr. Rojas. “There will be no more need for owning a car once the automobile has dropped off its passenger it will drive on to the next passenger.”