Aruvankadu is a small town located in

The Nilgiris District The Nilgiris district () is one of the 38 districts in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Nilgiri ( en, Blue Mountains) is the name given to a range of mountains spread across the borders among the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kera ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil languag ...

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

. It is located between

Coonoor Coonoor, natively spelt as Kunnur (), is a Taluk and a municipality of the Nilgiris district in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. As of 2011, the town had a population of 45,494. Demographics According to 2011 census, Coonoor had a populatio ...

and

Ooty Ooty (), officially known as Udhagamandalam (also known as Ootacamund (); abbreviated as Udhagai), is a city and a municipality in the Nilgiris district of the South Indian States and territories of India, state of Tamil Nadu. It is located ...

on the

NH 67 National Highway 67 (NH 67, previously National Highway 63) is a major National Highway in India. It starts at Ramnagar on NH 748, Belagavi - Panjim Road of Karnataka and ends at Krishnapatnam Port road in Andhra Pradesh. Currently four l ...

, 6 km from Coonoor town and 12 km from Ooty. It is connected by frequent bus services from various towns and cities. Aruvankadu is also connected via the Nigiri Mountain Railway (NMR).

Industry

It houses the cordite factory, one of the 40

Indian Ordnance Factories Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), consisting of the Indian Ordnance Factories, now known as Directorate of Ordnance (Coordination & Services) was an organisation, under the Department of Defence Production (DDP) of Ministry of Defence (MoD), Gover ...

. It is one of the oldest defence factories coming under the Ministry of Defence and the Indian Ordnance Factories. The cordite factory was established in 1903 by the then British Government on a huge campus and it still caters to the Defence Services by manufacturing

cordite Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom since 1889 to replace black powder as a military propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burn ...

, an antiquated type of smokeless propellant, which is used in manufacturing small arms ammunition and also as a propellant in various tanks. It is surrounded by small villages such as Balaji Nagar, Kara Korai, Jagathala, Othanatty, and Hosatty. There are four schools (Kendriya Vidyalaya, Defence Employees Matriculation School, Cordite Factory Higher Secondary School and St. Anns Convent and Girls Higher Secondary School). There is also an apprentice college affiliated to the cordite factory. The main sources of income for the local residents include employment at the Cordite factory, cultivation of

Nilgiri tea Nilgiri tea is a drink made by infusing leaves of ''Camellia sinensis'' that is grown and processed in the Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu, India. The leaves are processed as black tea, though some estates have expanded their product offerings ...

and vegetables.

Notable people

British astronomer and physicist

Robert Hanbury Brown Robert Hanbury Brown, AC FRS (31 August 1916 – 16 January 2002) was a British astronomer and physicist born in Aruvankadu, India. He made notable contributions to the development of radar and later conducted pioneering work in the field of ...

, developer of the

intensity interferometer An intensity interferometer is the name given to devices that use the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect. In astronomy, the most common use of such an astronomical interferometer is to determine the apparent angular diameter of a radio source or star ...

and discoverer of the

Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect In physics, the Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) effect is any of a variety of correlation and anti-correlation effects in the intensities received by two detectors from a beam of particles. HBT effects can generally be attributed to the wave–part ...

, was born in this place, where he lived until 8 years old.

References

External links

Indian Ordnance Factory website
Cities and towns in Nilgiris district {{Nilgiris-geo-stub