Museum magic: Bengaluru's journey from city of lights to Silicon Valley

Long before Bengaluru earned its reputation as India's Silicon Valley, it was known by another name — the City of Lights.

It was, in fact, the first city in Asia to receive electric street lighting, powered by the Shivanasamudra hydroelectric station as early as 1905.

Yet, this rich history remains largely unknown to the public. However, a new initiative by the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) hopes to change that.

NCBS is developing a digital museum dedicated to the history and culture of science and technology in the Bengaluru-Mysuru region, a project that its founders describe as the first of its kind in India.

The museum will cover a sweeping timeline, from Hyder Ali's Lalbagh Botanical Garden in the 18th century to the Wodeyars to the IT revolution of the 1990s.

The researchers have already identified around 50 stories, even as they are working to unearth more.

They highlighted that they plan to create a website, which the viewers can access to read about the stories in an interactive form, using audio-visual elements like images, videos, long-form articles and audio recordings. "We aim to give the viewers an experience of walking through a real museum gallery as they read through a story on the website," they added.

"Bengaluru is what it is today because of science and technology," said Prof LS Shashidhara, Director, National Centre for Biological Research (Constituent Centre of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research).

"But this history has not been coherently chronicled, and that is precisely what we want to address."

“Places like Baroda and Jaipur too had interests in science and technology, but these were mostly restricted to showcasing science as a kind of novelty rather than understanding it conceptually," said Shashidhara, giving the example of Jaipur’s Jantar Mantar.

"In Mysuru, science entered mainstream society, not just at the level of one or two individuals or the palace. Institutions like Maharaja's College and Central College made science a mainstream subject at a time when most colleges across India were set up primarily to teach English literature, history, and the arts."

The team has spent the past couple of years visiting state archives in Bengaluru and Mysuru, the Sandalwood Oil Factory in Mysore, still running on British-era boilers, and the Shivanasamudra hydroelectric station, where century-old turbines sit in a kind of open-air graveyard beside the river.

"Seeing the first turbine still standing there, going down to the hydel power station in the British era trolley, it made history very real," said Sadhana Attavar, Former Director, Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, who is working as advisor (Museum and Science Outreach), NCBS.

The decision to build a digital rather than a physical museum is deliberate. With archival material spread across multiple institutions, potentially collections in the UK, a physical museum would be both logistically and financially difficult. A digital format, the team argues, also solves the problem of reach.

Standalone kiosks will be placed in airports, educational institutions, and public spaces.

"Anyone with an internet connection will be able to access this… Indian children living abroad, people from the region now settled elsewhere, they will all be able to know this history,” said Attavar.

The project is expected to take two to three years and will be executed in two phases.

For the researchers, the stakes go beyond nostalgia. "The IT revolution did not happen in a vacuum," said Dr Karthik Ram, Research Fellow, NCBS.

"It is, therefore, important to understand the history that led to this moment. Moreover, an initiative like this is a great way to get people excited about science — not just about the products of science, but about the process itself."