TIRUCHY: A Shivalingam, the man who hit upon the idea of sending telegrams in Tamil and came up with the code way back in 1955, passed away on Sunday. He was 94.
A resident of Seshasayee Nagar in Tiruchy, Shivalingam joined the department as clerk in 1944 and retired in 1982.
He conceived the Tamil telegram in 1955 by encoding Tamil characters using Morse code and demonstrated it before the then Union Communications Minister P Subburayan in 1961. Unfortunately, his idea was not put into use.
Shivalingam’s daughter Manonmani said, “ I was told that my father’s idea was not implemented because of the lack of encoding facilities in other official Indian languages. However, his idea was well received by Tamil enthusiasts across the world.” India’s last Governor General and senior Congress leader C Rajagopalachari wrote a letter of appreciation to Shivalingam in May 1955.
In 1998, the DMK government honoured Shivalingam with a cash award in acknowledgement of his contributions. After retirement, Shivalingam penned many books, including translations from English to Tamil.
His body and eyes were donated to Tiruchy GH. Though his relatives approached the hospital to donate his mortal remains, the unavailability of administrative officials delayed the process and the family had to wait for three hours.
His son S Venkatraman, said, “Though his eyes were donated in the morning, we had to wait for house to donate his body as it was a Sunday.”
The body was handed over to KAP Vishwanatham Government Medical College to be used in research.