President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam went down memory lane to recollect his long association with Bangalore where he started his journey into the world of science and technolgy.

Reminiscing his days as a senior scientific assistant at the Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) in the late 1950s, Kalam said here late Sunday it was Bangalore which fostered his scientific career and empowered him at an young age.

"The Hovercraft, which was the first exhibition of what could be done in India in the world of flying machines, gave me a chance to pilot then Karnataka chief minister S Nijalingappa from High Grounds to Cubbon Park, barely a few inches above the ground.

It was my first theatre of action, which gave me the confidence that 'it can be done' in India by Indians," Kalam recalled.

Recalling how Karnataka played a key role in shaping his career, the president said for any rocket engineer in India, Karnataka had always been a source of inspiration. The heritage and past glory that can be sung in the state would make any nation proud.

"In the history of rocketry, the first war rocket was designed, developed and operationalized in a war at Sri Rangapatna near Mysore. It was a thrilling experience for me to have seen the class of rockets that Tippu Sultan deployed against the British in the first Sri Rangapatna war. I saw them at the Wooldridge Artillery museum near London," Kalam disclosed.

Incidentally, Bangalore was the place where Kalam met his mentor Satish Dhawan, a doyen of Indian aerospace science, who went on to become the director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and chairman of the Indian Space Resarch Organization (ISRO).

"He (Dhawan) taught me the nuances of aerodynamics, which I effectively used in the design of contra rotating propeller in the Hovercraft and exposed me to the art of design, development and project management.

"My teacher, who made Bangalore his home and spent rest of his life here, appointed me as the project director of the first indigenous satellite launch vehicle (SLV). It started the saga of putting Indian satellites in orbits using our own rocket systems," Kalam told a gathering of about 500 present and former legislators.