Proby Cautley

Sir Proby Thomas Cautley KCB ( born January 3, 1802 in Suffolk, † January 25, 1871 in Sydenham ), was an English engineer and palaeontologist. His main work was the planning and management of the execution of the Ganges canal in India. The 560 km long canal connects Haridwar and Kanpur, where it joins the Ganges River.

Proby Cautley came at the age of 17 years during the reign of the British East India Company to India and joined in 1819 the artillery of the county in Bengal. In 1825, he was assistant to Captain Robert Smith, the building of the Eastern Yamuna Canal served as the engineer in charge, said because of its location in the Doab fertile plain between the rivers Ganges and Yamuna is also called Doab Canal. Cautley in 1831 after the completion of this channel for the position of senior engineer to monitor the channel, a position he held until 1843. In 1836 he was also appointed general superintendent of the Northwest Indian channels.

After the completion of the Ganges canal and its opening in 1854, Cautley went back to England, where he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath ( KCB ) and occupied from 1858 to 1868 a seat on the Council of India. He died on 25 January 1871 in Sydenham, near London.

The way channel

The planning and construction management for the ongoing channel was Cautleys important work. Some preliminary plans were made as early as the 1830s. 1840 was Cautley before the first concrete plans for a canal, the irrigation of the area between the rivers Ganges, Yamuna and Hindan - should serve - then called Jumna. Was to prepare and he rode off the area for six months and measured the future canal route by hand. Although he was confident that the canal construction was possible, numerous obstacles put in his way. They were usually of a financial nature, but the most annoying problem was the resistance of Lord Ellenborough, the then Governor-General and Viceroy of India. He left the work, hardly begun, close it, because he was convinced that the project was too expensive and poorly planned. Cautley remained steadfast and finally convinced the British East India Company, to support him. Lord Hardinge, the successor of Lord Ellenborough, supported the work Cautleys, so free from this side of the road was for the swift continuation of the work.

Also, during construction there was resistance, such as by the Hindu priests from Haridwar, who thought that the holy water of the Ganges would be caught by the channel. Cautley reassured by agreeing a plan to leave a gap in the dam through which the Ganges was free to flow freely. To further calm the situation also contributed Ghats ( bathing places ) in which he built along the river, and the inauguration of the dam underway with celebrations in honor of Lord Ganesh, the god of all beginnings.

The project was approved in 1841, construction began in April 1842. All materials had to be produced on site, not just the bricks together with mortar, but also the kilns. The engineers had to face numerous problems during construction, including the threat posed by the mountain streams that threatened the canal. Near Roorkee, a steep drop through an aqueduct had to be overcome, so that the channel is there 25 feet above the original river bed.

Between 1845 and 1848 Cautley had to return to England for health reasons, after his return he was appointed director of the channels in the northwestern provinces. When the canal was opened on 8 April 1854, the main channel was 560 km long, the branches somewhat 492 km. The channel took the waters of more than 4800 km various inflows and secured the irrigation of more than 3100 km ² of arable land in more than 5000 villages.

Paleontological work

Cautley was actively involved in Dr. Hugh Falconer's fossil expeditions in the Siwaliks, and depicted a wide collection of fossil mammals together, including the bones of a hippo and crocodile fossils that proved the existence of a bog in the Siwaliks. In addition, he found the rest of saber-toothed tigers and of Elephas ganesa - a Elefantenart with tusks of more than three meters in length -, also the bones of a fossil ostrich, turtle fossils and the remains of a giant crane. Cautley wrote many scientific papers on geology and fossil leadership of the Siwaliks, some of them along with Hugh Falconer. The work was published in the Proceedings of the Bengal Asiatic Society and the Geological Society of London.

Works

The literary work Cautleys bears witness to his wide range of interests. He wrote over a six-meter deep -buried city in the Doab, on coal and lignite in the Himalayas, gold panning in the Sutlej and Yamuna Siwalikss and between, about a new kind of snake, about mastodons of the Siwaliks and the production of tar. In 1860 he published a detailed description of the construction work underway to channel.

Honors

1837 Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London awarded him. One of the seven halls of residence of the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee is named after him. His friend John Forbes Royle named after him, the plant genus Cautleya.

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