How Indian MIT and IIT Graduates Have Shaped Computer History

Updated Video Location: http://youtu.be/v6q14yBlpjY

[Recorded July 15, 2010]
In the last fifteen years the very names Bangalore and Silicon Valley have become evocative of the important connections between India and the United States in the global IT industry. Historian Ross Bassett argues that the linkages between the two countries are far older and deeper than is widely known. In the course of his research, he found that Indian graduates of MIT significantly influenced the creation of modern technological India. In the colonial period, a small group of Indians, including some associated with Gandhi, went to MIT as an anti-colonial act and as a way to develop technological capabilities for India. Indian graduates of MIT played a key role in the founding of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), and in the years after 1947, were central figures in the Indian steel industry, the atomic program, and the space program. The Indian IT industry today is to an astounding degree the product of Indian graduates of MIT. Since 1965, Indian graduates of MIT and graduates of IIT have also played an increasingly important role in American technology and computing.

Bassett's research is based on numerous research trips to India and scores of interviews. For this project he created a database of every Indian graduate of MIT in the 20th century. Bassett has published articles on Indian graduates of MIT and on IIT Kanpur. His work was profiled in the Economic Times of India and he presented at the Godrej Lecture in Business History in Mumbai in October, 2009.

This lecture features Dr. Bassett and T.M. Ravi an IIT graduate, Silicon Valley businessman, and member of TIE discussing the roots of the Indian IT industry and its influence on the computing history.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Computer
• History
• Museum
• Ross
• Bassett
• India
• Institutes
• of
• Technology
• Massachusetts
• MIT
• IIT
• Silicon
• Valley
• Bangalore
• Entrepreneur
• Innovation
• Information

[SciPoly]

Thanks for sharing these videos, I am an Iranian and I found this video very inspiring.

[SuperSobhit]

@burnstagger my friend we are unable to make our own OS because our people don't have that much of capital to make there own OS of that only they are going outside the country and working in other companies but we are hard working people and do lot of work also in INDIA we don't have anything like we get salary for an hour work we have to work for whole month and save money for our family but still we made our country proud and we will continue to do so......good wish for you too.

[rksz2004]

@330MillionGods Which world ranking hand book?

[Harry0Putt0Punjabi]

watch?v=2Hztuj65DI8

Watch this Video. Its about People going outside India and Work there!

[akram4179]

@fuxu123 Did you even listen to this talk? They clearly discuss in detail that the major reason why India progressed so well in IT was due to the 20 to 30 years of educational build-up by institutes like IITs... something no other major country with comparable population (population abundance being a key factor as well) such as China did not have.

Also most of the literate people in India were also well versed in communicating in English. Racial superiority was really not brought up.

[daltonagre]

@330MillionGods IIT are engeneer, while King Saud University has many courses.

[330MillionGods]

World ranking of King Saud University is 180 and IITs are after 500s. Surprising..

[kurt05051987]

nice video. thanks for posting.

[fuxu123]

conferences like this are always about racial superiority one way or another the underlying meaning behind this is that the indians are better than everybody else in IT and everybody else sucks if your not an indian you have no talents in IT and life blah blah blah pat on the back racial arrogance next plz

[lovelplants]

nice video.. speech is very good

[potpie921]

thank you for sharing!!

[AIMANALI]

India is a phenom - no doubt. In like 20 years when the rest of the world was watching Hollywood movie - Indians were working real hard. Look at them now - all the respect.