Panchanan Karmakar


Panchanan Karmakar was an Indian Bengali inventor. He hailed from Serampore. He invented the Bangla font. His wooden Bengali alphabet and typeface had been used until Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar proposed a simplified version. Apart from Bangla, Karmakar developed type in 14 languages, including Arabic, Persian, Marathi, Telugu, Burmese and Chinese. His predecessors first lived in Jirat, then they started living in Tribeni in 1778.

Early life and career

Karmakar was born in Tribeni village in Hooghly district. His ancestors were calligraphers; they inscribed names and decorations on copper plates, weapons, metal pots, etc. panchanan himself was a wordsmith at tribani.
Andrews, a Christian missionary, had a printing press at Hughli. In order to print Nathaniel Brassey Halhed's A Grammar of the Bengal Language, he needed a Bangla type. Under the supervision of English typographer Charles Wilkins, Karmakar created the first Bengali typeface for printing.
In 1779, Karmakar moved to Kolkata to work for Wilkins' new printing press. in chuchura, Hoggly.In 1801, he developed a typeface for British missionary William Carey's Bangla translation of the New Testament. In 1803, Karmakar developed a set of Devnagari script, the first Nagari type to be developed in India.