CHENNAI: In 1794, five years before William Lambton submitted his plan for Geogrophical and Mathematical Survey (Predecessor to GTS), the English East India Company opened its first survey school outside Europe at Fort St George. This school served as a training ground for hordes of surveying officers.
As told by historian S Muthiah in his book Madras Miscellany, the survey school that started with eight students and went on to produce a lot of surveyors who participated in the GTS. The school now stands transformed across 100 acres of land as the College of Engineering Guindy, at the Anna University campus.
In the year 1859, the survey school moved to Chepauk Palace and took the name of Civil Engineering School, but later became an engineering college affiliated to Madras University. “This was the second engineering college to be set up in the country after the one in Roorkee,” says S S Ramakrishnan, Director, Institute of Remote Sensing, Anna University.
In 1920, the college shifted to its present campus in Adyar. After fifty years, the Tamil Nadu government formed Anna University.
But the Guindy campus continues to provide special attention to its Institute of Remote Sensing that was set up in the year 1982.
“This campus has a great history, our founding fathers have left us with a lot to learn and improvise, I hope we do well,” adds Ramakrishnan.