of the British Raj. The Post Office Act XVII of 1837 enabled the Governor-General of India to convey messages by post within the territories of the East India Company. Mail was available to some officials without charge, which became a controversial privilege as the years passed. The Indian Post Office service was established on October 1, 1837. The British also constructed a vast railway network in the region for both strategic and commercial reasons. The British education system, aimed at producing able civil and administrative services candidates, exposed a number of Indians to foreign institutions. Jagadis Chandra Bose (1858–1937), Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861–1944), Satyendra Nath Bose (1894–1974), Meghnad Saha (1893–1956), P. C. Mahalanobis (1893–1972), C. V. Raman (1888–1970), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995), Homi Bhabha (1909–1966), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920), Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971), Har Gobind Khorana (1922–2011), Harish Chandra (1923–1983), and Abdus Salam (1926–1996) were among the notable scholars of this period. Extensive interaction between colonial and native sciences was seen during most of the colonial era. Western science came to be associated with the requirements of nation building rather than being viewed entirely as a colonial entity, especially as it continued to fuel necessities from agriculture to commerce. Scientists from India also appeared throughout Europe. By the time of India's independence colonial science had assumed importance within the westernized intelligentsia and establishment. French astronomer, Pierre Janssen observed the Solar eclipse of 18 August 1868 and discovered helium, from Guntur in Madras State, British India. Post-Independence (1947 CE – present) See also List of Indian engineering colleges before Independence List of Indian inventions and discoveries Timeline of historic inventions Timeline of Indian innovation Science and technology in India Engineering education in India Information technology in India Science and technology studies in India Nalanda University Notes References Allan, J. & Stern, S. M. (2008), coin, Encyclopædia Britannica. Allchin, F.R. (1979), South Asian Archaeology 1975: Papers from the Third International Conference of the Association of South Asian Archaeologists in Western Europe, Held in Paris edited by J.E.van Lohuizen-de Leeuw, Brill Academic Publishers, . Ahmad, S. (2005), "Rise and Decline of the Economy of Bengal", Asian Affairs, 27 (3): 5–26. Arnold, David (2004), The New Cambridge History of India: Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India, Cambridge University Press, . Baber, Zaheer (1996), The Science of Empire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization, and Colonial Rule in India, State University of New York Press, . Balasubramaniam, R. (2002), Delhi