page_title: Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The main senate building of the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, formerly, the Thomason College of Civil Engineering, founded 1847, the oldest engineering college in India.
context_page_description: Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, formerly University of Roorkee and Thomason College of Civil Engineering, is a public technical and research university located in Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India. Established in 1847 in British India by the then lieutenant governor, Sir James Thomason, it is the second oldest technical institution in Asia. It was given university status in 1949 and was converted into an Indian Institute of Technology in 2001, thus becoming the seventh IIT to be declared.
  IIT Roorkee has 22 academic departments covering Engineering, Applied Sciences, Humanities & Social Sciences and Management programs with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.
  IIT Roorkee has a strong entrepreneurial culture, with many alumni who have moved on to found technological and social ventures in India and abroad, and have played an important role in the development of India. Ten alumni have won the Padma awards and twenty-five alumni have won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology.
context_section_description: The institution has its origins in a class started in 1845 to train local youth in engineering to assist in public works then beginning.  In 1847 it was officially established. It was renamed as the Thomason College of Civil Engineering in 1854 in honour of its founder, James Thomason, lieutenant governor 1843–53. The first Indian to graduate from the Roorkee college was Rai Bahadur Kanhaiya Lal in 1852.
  The Department of Civil Engineering was established in 1847 and is the oldest engineering department in India. The Electrical Engineering department of the Thomson College was established in the year 1897, and was one of the earliest such specializations in the world.  The architecture department is the first in India in instituting a master's degree course in Architecture (M. Arch.) in the year 1969–70.
  In 1978, the Institute of Paper Technology, Saharanpur was merged with the then University of Roorkee. The Institute of Paper Technology was established as School of Paper Technology by the Government of India in 1964, with an aid from the Royal Swedish Government. The school was renamed as the Institute of Paper Technology in July 1968 and subsequently Department of Paper Technology in July 1992.
  The first edition of Thomso, the institute's annual cultural festival was held in 1982.
  On 21 September 2001, an ordinance issued by the Government of India declared it as the nation's seventh Indian Institute of Technology, renaming it to the current name, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. The ordinance was converted into an act by the Parliament to make IIT Roorkee an "Institution of National Importance".
caption: The Thomason College of Engineering was founded in 1845 to help train engineers for the construction of the Ganges Canal.  The Canal Engineer's Bungalow lies within the campus of IIT Roorkee.
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