50 Indian inventions

The list of inventions and discoveries of the Indus Valley Civilization refers to the technological and civilizational achievements of the Indus Valley Civilization, an ancient civilization which flourished in the Bronze Age around the general region of the Indus River and Ghaggar-Hakra River in what is today Pakistan and northwestern India.

In quantum statistics, Bose–Einstein (B–E) statistics describe one of two possible ways in which a collection of non-interacting, indistinguishable particles may occupy a set of available discrete energy states at thermodynamic equilibrium. The aggregation of particles in the same state, which is a characteristic of particles obeying Bose–Einstein statistics, accounts for the cohesive streaming of laser light and the frictionless creeping of superfluid helium. The theory of this behaviour was developed (1924–25) by Satyendra Nath Bose, who recognized that a collection of identical and indistinguishable particles can be distributed in this way. The idea was later adopted and extended by Albert Einstein in collaboration with Bose.

Calico is a plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton. It may also contain unseparated husk parts. The fabric is far less fine than muslin, but less coarse and thick than canvas or denim. However, it is still very cheap owing to its unfinished and undyed appearance.

Carrom is a tabletop game of Indian origin. The game is very popular in South Asia and the Middle East, and is known by various names in different languages. In South Asia, many clubs and cafés hold regular tournaments. Carrom is very commonly played by families, including children, and at social functions. Carrom is not a patented game. It is in the public domain. Different standards and rules exist in different areas. It became very popular in United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms during the early 20th century.

Chakram is a throwing weapon from the Indian subcontinent. One of its major purposes is to protect the turban and the head from sword/melee attacks. It is circular with a sharpened outer edge and a diameter of 12–30 centimetres (4.7–11.8 in). It is also known as chalikar meaning "circle", and was sometimes referred to in English writings as a "war-quoit". The Chakram is primarily a throwing weapon but can also be used hand-to-hand. A smaller variant called chakri is worn on the wrist. A related weapon is the chakri dong, a bamboo staff with a chakri attached at one end.

Chess is a recreational and competitive board game played between two players. Sometimes called Western or international chess to distinguish it from its predecessors and other chess variants, the current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from similar, much older games of Indian and Persian origin. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.

Chintz, woodblock printed, painted, stained or glazed calico textiles, originated in Golconda in the 16th century. Cloth is printed with designs featuring flowers and other patterns in different colours, typically on a light plain background.. Since the 19th century the term has also been used for the style of floral decoration developed in those calico textiles, but then used more widely, for example on chintzware pottery and wallpaper. Chintz designs are derived from the style of Indian designs themselves reflecting Mughal art. A white base with floral and animal prints are its basic characteristics.

Coimbatore Wet Grinder refers to wet grinders manufactured in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. It has been recognized as a Geographical indication by the Government of India in 2005-06. As of 2015, Coimbatore has more than 700 wet grinder manufacturers with a monthly output 75,000 units per every 100,000 produced in India.

A cotton gin – meaning "cotton engine" – is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. The fibers are then processed into various cotton goods such as calico, while any undamaged cotton is used largely for textiles like clothing. The separated seeds may be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil.

A crescograph is a device for measuring the growth in plants. It was invented in the early 20th century by Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose.

Crucible steel is steel made by melting pig iron, iron, and sometimes steel, often along with sand, glass, ashes, and other fluxes, in a crucible. In ancient times steel and iron were impossible to melt using charcoal or coal fires, which could not produce temperatures high enough. However, pig iron, having a higher carbon content thus a lower melting point, could be melted, and by soaking wrought iron or steel in the liquid pig-iron for a long time, the carbon content of the pig iron could be reduced as it slowly diffused into the iron. Crucible steel of this type was produced in South and Central Asia during the medieval era. This generally produced a very hard steel, but also a composite steel that was inhomogeneous, consisting of a very high-carbon steel and a lower-carbon steel. This often resulted in an intricate pattern when the steel was forged, filed or polished, with possibly the most well-known examples coming from the wootz steel used in Damascus swords. The steel was often much higher in carbon content and in quality in comparison with other methods of steel production of the time because of the use of fluxes.

A crystal detector is an electronic component used in some early 20th century radio receivers that consists of a piece of crystalline mineral which rectifies the alternating current radio signal and was employed as a detector (demodulator) to extract the audio modulation to produce the sound in the earphones. It was the first type of semiconductor diode, and one of the first semiconductor electronic devices. The most common type was the so-called cat whisker detector, which consisted of a piece of crystalline mineral, usually galena, with a fine wire touching its surface.

A crystal radio receiver, also called a crystal set, is a simple radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio. It uses only the power of the received radio signal to produce sound, needing no external power. It is named for its most important component, a crystal detector, originally made from a piece of crystalline mineral such as galena. This component is now called a diode.

Dhol can refer to any one of a number of similar types of double-headed drum widely used, with regional variations, throughout the Indian subcontinent. Its range of distribution in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan primarily includes northern areas such as the Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Kashmir, Sindh, Assam Valley, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Konkan, Goa, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. The range stretches westward as far as eastern Afghanistan. A related instrument is the dholak or dholki.

The dotara is a two, four, or sometimes five-stringed musical instrument, originating from eastern South Asia. It is commonly used in Bangladesh and the Indian states of Assam, West Bengal and Bihar, and is first mentioned in a 14th-century Saptakanda Ramayana. Later, it was adopted by the ascetic cults of Bauls and Fakirs.

An electronic tanpura is an electronic instrument that replicates the sound of an Indian string instrument known as the tanpura (tambura), used to provide a constant drone to accompany another's vocal or instrumental melody.

Flush deck is a term in naval architecture. It can refer to any deck of a ship which is continuous from stem to stern. It has two specific common referents:Flush deck aircraft carriers are those with no island superstructure, so that the top deck of the vessel consists of only an unbroken flight deck. "Flush deckers" is a common nickname for a series of American destroyers built in large quantities during or shortly after World War I – the Caldwell, Wickes, and Clemson classes – so called because they lacked the raised forecastle of preceding American destroyers, thus the main deck was a flush deck.

The Hindu–Arabic numeral system or Indo-Arabic numeral system is a positional decimal numeral system, and is the most common system for the symbolic representation of numbers in the world.

A hookah, also known as the qalyān or Shisha, is a single- or multi-stemmed instrument for heating or vaporizing and then smoking either tobacco, flavored tobacco, or sometimes cannabis, hashish, and in the past opium. The smoke is passed through a water basin—often glass-based—before inhalation.

A horn antenna or microwave horn is an antenna that consists of a flaring metal waveguide shaped like a horn to direct radio waves in a beam. Horns are widely used as antennas at UHF and microwave frequencies, above 300 MHz. They are used as feed antennas for larger antenna structures such as parabolic antennas, as standard calibration antennas to measure the gain of other antennas, and as directive antennas for such devices as radar guns, automatic door openers, and microwave radiometers. Their advantages are moderate directivity, low standing wave ratio (SWR), broad bandwidth, and simple construction and adjustment.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores a higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the gross national income GNI (PPP) per capita is higher. It was developed by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and was further used to measure a country's development by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s Human Development Report Office.

India ink is a simple black or coloured ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing and outlining, especially when inking comic books and comic strips. India ink is also used in medical applications.

An insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is a three-terminal power semiconductor device primarily used as an electronic switch which, as it was developed, came to combine high efficiency and fast switching. It consists of four alternating layers (P-N-P-N) that are controlled by a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) gate structure.

JPEG is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable trade-off between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality. Since its introduction in 1992, JPEG has been the most widely used image compression standard in the world, and the most widely used digital image format, with several billion JPEG images produced every day as of 2015.

Ludo is a strategy board game for two to four players, in which the players race their four tokens from start to finish according to the rolls of a single die. Like other cross and circle games, Ludo is derived from the Indian game Pachisi, but simpler. The game and its variations are popular in many countries and under various names.

A mind-controlled wheelchair is a mind-machine interfacing device that uses thought to command the motorised wheelchair's motion. The first such device to reach production was designed by Diwakar Vaish, Head of Robotics and Research at A-SET Training & Research Institutes. The wheelchair is of great importance to patients suffering from locked-in syndrome (LIS), in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except the eyes. Such wheelchairs can also be used in case of muscular dystrophy, a disease that weakens the musculoskeletal system and hampers locomotion.

Multiple patterning is a class of technologies for manufacturing integrated circuits (ICs), developed for photolithography to enhance the feature density. It is expected to be necessary for the 10 nm and 7 nm node semiconductor processes and beyond. The premise is that a single lithographic exposure may not be enough to provide sufficient resolution. Hence additional exposures would be needed, or else positioning patterns using etched feature sidewalls would be necessary.

Indian musical instruments can be broadly classified according to the Hornbostel–Sachs system into four categories: chordophones, aerophones, membranophones (drums) and idiophones.

A palampore or (Palempore) is a type of hand-painted and mordant-dyed bed cover that was made in India for the export market during the eighteenth century and very early nineteenth century. Only the wealthiest classes could afford to buy palampore; therefore, the few examples that have survived are often quite valuable today. Palampore were primarily exported to Europe and to Dutch colonists in Indonesia and what was then called Ceylon.

A Tibetan prayer flag is a colorful rectangular cloth, often found strung along trails and peaks high in the Himalayas. They are used to bless the surrounding countryside and for other purposes. Prayer flags are believed to have originated with Bon. In Bon, shamanistic Bonpo used primary-colored plain flags in Tibet. Traditional prayer flags include woodblock-printed text and images.

Roller mills are mills that use cylindrical rollers, either in opposing pairs or against flat plates, to crush or grind various materials, such as grain, ore, gravel, plastic, and others. Roller grain mills are an alternative to traditional millstone arrangements in gristmills. Roller mills for rock complement other types of mills, such as ball mills and hammermills, in such industries as the mining and processing of ore and construction aggregate; cement milling; and recycling.

Roti is a round flatbread native to the Indian subcontinent made from stoneground wholemeal flour, traditionally known as gehu ka atta, and water that is combined into a dough. Roti is consumed in many countries worldwide. Its defining characteristic is that it is unleavened. Naan from the Indian subcontinent, by contrast, is a yeast-leavened bread, as is kulcha. Like breads around the world, roti is a staple accompaniment to other foods.

The ancient Indus Valley Civilization of historic India, including current day India and Sindh, Pakistan, was prominent in infrastructure, hydraulic engineering, and had many water supply and sanitation devices that were the first of their kind.

A sāqiyah, alternative spelling sakia, saqia or saqiya, also called Persian wheel, tablia, rehat, and in Latin tympanum is a mechanical water lifting device, similar in function to a scoop wheel, which uses buckets, jars, or scoops fastened either directly to a vertical wheel, or to an endless belt activated by such a wheel. The vertical wheel is itself attached by a drive shaft to a horizontal wheel, which is traditionally set in motion by animal power Because it is not using the power of flowing water, the sāqiyah is different from a noria and any other type of water wheel.

Shampoo is a hair care product, typically in the form of a viscous liquid, that is used for cleaning hair. Less commonly, shampoo is available in bar form, like a bar of soap. Shampoo is used by applying it to wet hair, massaging the product into the scalp, and then rinsing it out. Some users may follow a shampooing with the use of hair conditioner.

A shawl is an Indian simple item of clothing, loosely worn over the shoulders, upper body and arms, and sometimes also over the head. It is usually a rectangular or square piece of cloth, which is often folded to make a triangle, but can also be triangular in shape. Other shapes include oblong shawls.

Siddha medicine is a traditional medicine originating in South India. It is one of the oldest systems of medicine in India. The Indian Medical Association regards Siddha medicine degrees as "fake" and Siddha therapies as quackery, posing a danger to national health due to absence of training in science-based medicine. Identifying fake medical practitioners without qualifications, the Supreme Court of India stated in 2018 that "unqualified, untrained quacks are posing a great risk to the entire society and playing with the lives of people without having the requisite training and education in the science from approved institutions".

and as known by hindu lodardest saraswati instument.

Snakes and ladders, known originally as Moksha Patam, is an ancient Indian board game for two or more players regarded today as a worldwide classic. It is played on a game board with numbered, gridded squares. A number of "ladders" and "snakes" are pictured on the board, each connecting two specific board squares. The object of the game is to navigate one's game piece, according to die rolls, from the start to the finish, helped by climbing ladders but hindered by falling down snakes.

A solid-propellant rocket or solid rocket is a rocket with a rocket engine that uses solid propellants (fuel/oxidizer). The earliest rockets were solid-fuel rockets powered by gunpowder; they were used in warfare by the Chinese, Indians, Mongols and Persians, as early as the 13th century.

A "spinning wheel" is a device for spinning thread or yarn from fibres. It was fundamental to the cotton textile industry prior to the Industrial Revolution. It laid the foundations for later machinery such as the spinning jenny and spinning frame, which displaced the spinning wheel during the Industrial Revolution.

Steelmaking is the process of producing steel from iron ore and/or scrap. In steelmaking, impurities such as nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and excess carbon are removed from the sourced iron, and alloying elements such as manganese, nickel, chromium, carbon and vanadium are added to produce different grades of steel. Limiting dissolved gases such as nitrogen and oxygen and entrained impurities in the steel is also important to ensure the quality of the products cast from the liquid steel.

A stirrup is a light frame or ring that holds the foot of a rider, attached to the saddle by a strap, often called a stirrup leather. Stirrups are usually paired and are used to aid in mounting and as a support while using a riding animal. They greatly increase the rider's ability to stay in the saddle and control the mount, increasing the animal's usefulness to humans in areas such as communication, transportation and warfare.

A stūpa is a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics that is used as a place of meditation. A related architectural term is a chaitya, which is a prayer hall or temple containing a stupa.

Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Table sugar, granulated sugar, or regular sugar, refers to sucrose, a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose.

The veena comprises a family of chordophone instruments from the Indian subcontinent. Ancient musical instruments evolved into many variations, such as lutes, zithers and arched harps. The many regional designs have different names such as the Rudra veena, the Saraswati veena, the Vichitra veena and others.

A Wet grinder is a food preparation appliance used especially in Indian cuisine for grinding food grains to produce a paste or batter. Wet grinding is rare in western cuisine but common in Indian cuisine. Wet grinders are used to make pastes from grains and lentils and is used extensively in South Indian cuisine for preparation of popular dishes such as dosa, idly, vada, appam and paniyaram. It consists of a granite stones which rotate inside a metal drum with the help of an electric motor and the food grains get crushed between the stone and drum.

Wootz steel is a crucible steel characterized by a pattern of bands and high carbon content. These bands are formed by sheets of microscopic carbides within a tempered martensite or pearlite matrix in higher carbon steel, or by ferrite and pearlite banding in lower carbon steels. It was a pioneering steel alloy invented in Southern India in the mid-1st millennium BC and exported globally.

A worm drive is a gear arrangement in which a worm meshes with a worm gear. The two elements are also called the worm screw and worm wheel. The terminology is often confused by imprecise use of the term worm gear to refer to the worm, the worm gear, or the worm drive as a unit.

Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India. Yoga is one of the six Āstika (orthodox) schools of Indian philosophical traditions.