The story of modern India is often told through politicians and intellectuals. Less remembered are the engineers, chemists, and technologists who crossed oceans in search of knowledge and opportunity. Their global encounters helped shape the ideas, institutions, and industries that drove India’s transformation in the twentieth century.

In 1900, Puran Singh, a 19-year-old student from undivided Punjab, sailed for Japan. His purpose was to study glass manufacturing. A teacher in Rawalpindi had convinced him to go, and cobbled together some funds from well-to-do locals. They were driven by a vague sense of idealism. “[N]o one in ‘Pindi had the slightest notion what they were talking about,” Puran Singh later wrote in his memoirs; “it was just the sensation of sending us out, and great hopes of our returning and starting factories.” Nevertheless, the feeling was so strong that he was prepared to abandon his undergraduate studies in Lahore in order to embark on this adventure.