Muni B. Sakya: A forgotten computing genius of Nepal

                                                                          Picture courtesy: High Tech Pioneer Pvt. Ltd.

Born in 1942, in Patan Muni Bahadur Sakya was a keen and a genius student. He had deep interest in the field of  Science and Technology from his childhood. He used to work on several small projects. For the first time he designed a electric motor. He even made the core by himself by cutting iron sheets.

He also had a very keen interest in astronomy. He loved to watch night sky and star watching was his hobby. So, he had built a telescope using the lenses from his Grandfather's spectacles. He would put the telescope on a wooden bench and let the public view eclipse on the night of the eclipse.

Another notable achievement of his boyhood is a radio receiver that was designed and fabricated to receive Nepal Radio. 

In 1962 he acquired his Diploma in Radio Engineering from Calcutta, India. Then he started his professional life as a technician in Nepal Radio.

In 1970 he went to UK on a British Council Scholarship and obtained a Degree in Communication Engineering. Upon his return from UK he designed several devices including laboratory type stabilized power supply and sine wave generator.

In 1978 while he was working in National News Agency (Rastriya Samachar Samiti) he got an opportunity to go to France. It was then, he decided to switch to field of computing.

While he was doing course on Communication, Digital Electronics and Computer Techniques in France; he made microprocessor based controllers and video cards.

1979, it was a big year, the year when History was written in the field of computing of Nepal. For the first time in Nepal a microcomputer was built by Mr. Sakya. It had 1Kb memory. He had made power supply and video card himself. He had bought keyboard from US and made monitor out of a Russian TV.

In the South Asian Regional Conference on Computers held at Blue Star Hotel in Kathamandu the same year he got opportunity to demonstrate his microcomputer which received world wide coverage.

In 1981 he went to US on his own and when even India had not done much in the field of microcomputer he was able to work on American Projects. He was involved with a company in designing computer cards. He worked on development of floppy disk controllers with 900 Kb storage space when Apple Computer was using only 80Kb per diskette.

Then Seagate had made 5Mb hard disks but there were no I/O card for them. After he returned back form US he made the I/O card and then the hard disk along with I/O card was employed in Agricultural Development Bank.

1983 another big year, the year in which Computers were taught Nepali ;meaning he localized the computers. He demonstrated computing in Nepali in a microcomputer with the display of the then Nepalese National Anthem in Devanagiri. It was a CP/M based computer. Even India had not been able to do it that time. He received the Science Award in December 1983 for his work.

It was only in 1981 MS-DOS was released, if we look at the time line then we weren't much behind.

He also established an industry Sun Moon Computer Industry Pvt. Ltd., the first industry in Nepal to manufacture computer cards.

 Mr. Sakya has been experiment on robots since a number of years. Around 2004-05, he developed a robot named "Manis Robot" that could speak Nepali with the capability to discern obstacles by the help of built in ultrasonic, infra-red, mechanical wiskers and other audio and visual devices.

In 2005 the then, RONAST (ROyal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology) (now NAST ) conferred him with felicitations and a cash award of Rs 50,000 as an A class scientist in the field of  Information Technology.

On May 17, 2006 Mr. Sakya designed a super computer, first super computer of Nepal based on Linux Clustering system. It had 16 nodes and used Open Mosix and Oscar OS. It takes half an hour to complete a task that a general computer takes 8 hours. It took less than Rs. 1 million to complete the super computer.

He currently serves as the CEO of High Tech Pioneer Pvt. Ltd.

If the government and the businessmen of our country would have helped him and invested in his works then till today we would also have covered a long distance in Information Technology.