ENGINEERING IN INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 129, 3 June 1935, Page 6

ENGINEERING IN INDIA.

A FASCINATING RECORD. "The Military Engineer in India," Volume 1., deals with the achievements of British military engineers and Indian sappers and miners in fortification and war; Volume 11. treats of their work in the civil departments of the Government of India, in irrigation, in construction of roads, railways and buildings, and in telegraphy, mining, education and surveying.* The aim of Colonel Sanders has been to write a readable story rather than an "exhaustive and perhaps exhausting military record," and he has combined successfully three main streams of military action, personal exploit and adventure and scientific and technical achievement, each of which would provide material for larger volumes than those under review. The East India Company was formed in 1000, and in the early years of "its life engineering work was carried out by any ingenious person, whether ship's master, warehouse clerk or gunnery sergeant, who felt inclined or could be persuaded to undertake constructional work for transport or defence. In the middle of the eighteenth century the three famous corps, the Bengal, Bombay and Madras Engineers, were established and carried on all the engineering work in British India for more than a hundred years, being amalgamated with the Eoyal Engineers in 1802. Mistakes in plenty were made in India, and no attempt is made to gloss them over, but courage and determination amounting to heroism shine out in every chapter, while the work of the military engineers in railway construction and in surveying alone is enough to rank them high in practical and theoretical capacity. In more recent times the work of the civil and military engineers has been inextricably mixed in many branches of public works in India, but while the civilengineer has assumed almost complete responsibility for the huge irrigation works in the Punjab and for the greater part of railway construction, the military engineer was the pioneer, and the recent construction of frontier railways shows that his hand has not lost its cunning. Since the war the Khyber railway has been constructed, leading to the Afghan boundary through' some of the most difficult country in the world. The total of 34 tunnels and 02 bridges in 20 miles points to the natural difficulties, and these were not lessened bv a temperature range of about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or by the interference of hostile tribesmen.

The chapters dealing with the Indian Survey are in many ways the most interesting, for few can resist a discussion about Mount Everest or fail to feel the attraction of exploration and map-making. The height of Mount Everest is not finally fixed, and when we learn that its determination rests upon the theodolite readings of vertical angles from a considerable distance, that the plumb line and level bubble are disturbed by the gravitational pull of the Himalayas, that the line of sight is distorted by abnormal refraction, and that the peak has a plume described by the Marquess of Clydesdale, who flew over it in 1033, as a barrage of ice fragments flung by rushing winds for several miles to leeward, we can understand the reluctance to give a final pronouncement. The Survey of India considers that the height above the geoidal surface of the earth, i.e., the height above water level carried into the heart of the mountain, is probably about 29,050 feet, but it adheres to the well-known figure of 29,002 feet until a definite final figure can be given. One wonders whether there was not an element of humour in the addition of the last two feet. The attempts to fix the longitude of Madras were the earliest excursions beyond topographical and lino and compass surveying, but major triangulation and attempts to fix latitudes and longitudes elsewhere in India led to the study of the shape of the earth and of the varying amount and direction of the force of gravity. In facing these problems it is not too much to say that the military engineer has been in the van of scientific progress in the study of geodesy for the last century, and has led the world in the study of isostasy during the last thirty years. Both volumes'are well illustrated, and the provision of separate maps in pockets at the back of the book makes for convenience of reference. * "The Military Engineer in India," by Lieut-Colonel B. W. C. Snndes. D.5.0., M.C., R.E. (The Institution of Royal Engineers, Chatham.) Vol. 1., 1933; Vol. 11., 1935.