In 1794, the famous École Polytechnique (Polytechnic School) was founded in Paris during the French Revolution. The same year, around 8,000 kilometres away, the first technical school outside of Europe came into existence in Madras (Chennai).
The institution, founded as the Survey School in Fort St. George by Michael Topping with just eight students hand-picked from the orphan asylum functioning in the coastal city, has transformed into the prestigious College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG) today, a constituent campus of Anna University.
As its original name indicated, the school was formed to address the dearth of people to assist in surveys carried out by the East India Company. “I have been greatly retarded for want of proper draughtsmen to make copies of my late surveys and plans of the Kistna (the Krishna river),” said Topping, the astronomer and surveyor who had set up the Madras Observatory two years earlier, in his letter to Sir Charles Oakley, president and governor of the council at Fort St. George.
