India Facts

India's First Supercomputer was PARAM 8000. PARAM stood for Parallel Machine. The computer was developed by the government run Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in 1991. The PARAM 8000 was introduced in 1991 with a rating of 1 Gigaflop (billion floating point operations per second).

All the chips and other elements that were used in making of PARAM were bought from the open domestic market. The various components developed and used in the PARAM series were Sun UltraSPARC II, later IBM POWER 4 processors, Ethernet, and the AIX Operating System. The major applications of PARAM Supercomputer are in long-range weather forecasting, remote sensing, drug design and molecular modelling.

India's First Nuclear Reactor was Apsara. It was also the first nuclear reactor in Asia. Apsara went critical at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Trombay on August 4, 1956. It heralded the arrival of India's nuclear energy programme. Dr. Homi Bhabha himself conceptualised the design of the reactor and the reactor was built entirely by Indian engineers in a record time of about 15 months.

Apsara is a swimming-pool-type reactor loaded with enriched uranium as fuel. The fuel core is suspended from a movable trolley in a pool filled with water. The pool water serves as coolant, moderator and reflector, besides providing the shielding.

SLV-3 was India's first indigenous satellite launch vehicle. The vehicle was launched by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on July 18, 1980. President A P J Abdul Kalam was the Project Director of SLV-3 The SLV-3 weighed 17 tonne and had a payload of 40 kg. The SLV-3 put 35 kg Rohini Satellite into the orbit. The launch of SLV-3 was a historic landmark for the Indian space programme. It gave ISRO an insight into the conceptualisation, design, development and management of a technically complex multi-disciplinary project. With the launch of SLV-3, India joined a select band of five nations that had this capability. The other five countries are USSR, USA, France, China and Japan.

Aryabhatta was the first satellite launched by India. It was named after the great Indian astronomer of the same name. Aryabhatta weighed 360kg and was launched by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1975 from Kapustin Yar using a Cosmos-3M launch vehicle.

The satellite had following objectives:
1. To indigenously design and fabricate a space-worthy satellite system and evaluate its perfromance in orbit.
2. To evolve the methodology of conducting a series of complex operations on the satellite in its orbital phase.
3. To set up ground-based receiving, transmitting and tracking systems.
4. To establish infrastructure for the fabrication of spacecraft systems.

Aryabhatta carried experiments related to X-Ray Astronomy, Solar Physics and Aeronomy. The satellite re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on 11 February 1992.

Tarapur Atomic Power Station (T.AP.S.) was the first nuclear power plant in India. The construction of the plant was started in 1962 and the plant went operational in 1969. The 320 MW Tarapur nuclear power station housed two 160 MW boiling water reactors (BWRs), the first in Asia. The Tarapur Plant was originally constructed by the American companies Bechtel and GE, under a 1963 123 Agreement between India, the United States, and the IAEA. The Tarapur Atomic Power Station is under the control of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited. Recently, two 540 MW pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) were operationalised at Tarapur. The new reactors were constructed by L & T and Gammon India. Tarapur Nuclear Power Station is the largest PHWR-based power station in India.

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (C.V. Raman) was the first Indian scientist to win Nobel Prize. C.V. Raman was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the Raman effect, which is named after him. Raman effect relates to the inelastic scattering of a photon. When light is scattered from an atom or molecule, most photons are elastically scattered (Rayleigh scattering). The scattered photons have the same energy (frequency) and, therefore, wavelength, as the incident photons. However, a small fraction of scattered light (approximately 1 in 10 million photons) is scattered from excitations with optical frequencies different from, and usually lower than, the frequency of the incident photons. Raman effect is helpful in analyzing the composition of liquids, gases, and solids.

The Zoological Garden in Kolkata is the largest Zoo in India. It is spread over an area of about 100 acres. The Zoo is located on Belvedre road in Kolkata and was established in 1876. The zoo is home to a rich variety of birds, animals, and reptiles.

The origins of the Zoo can be traced back to 1873, when, the then Governor Sir Richard Temple proposed the formation of a zoo in Calcutta. Sir C.L. Lendal corroborated it. Finally, the Government allotted land for this purpose responding to the joint petition of the Asiatic Society and Agri-Horticultural Society. The zoo was inaugurated on the January 1, 1876 by King Edward VII.

Zoological Garden, Kolkata is credited with bringing back the rare Manipur Brow Antlered Deer from near extinction. The zoo was first to have bred Giraffes and has produced Tigions, and Litigons as a cross breeding experiment. The artificial lake of the zoo attracts a large number of migratory birds every year.

Tihar Jail Complex in New Delhi is the largest prison complex in India. It comprises of nine prisons in the Tihar Complex with a sanction capacity of 4800 prisoners and one District Jail at Rohini with a sanction capacity of 1050 prisoners. Before 1958, the Jail was located at Delhi Gate area of Delhi. In 1958, the prison was transferred from Delhi Gate to its present site in Tihar Village in western part of New Delhi. In the beginning, only one Central Jail was commissioned with the lodging capacity of 1267 prisoners. Till 1966, the administrative control of the Jail was with the Government of Punjab. In 1966, the control of Tihar Jail was transferred to the Delhi Administration, Delhi in 1966.