General Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton KCSI (15 May 1803 – 24 July 1899) was a British army officer and irrigation engineer who worked in the Madras Presidency.

His dream was only partially realised, but he is still honoured in Andhra Pradesh and parts of Tamil Nadu for his efforts.

The museum holds approximately one hundred images and 15 machine tools that Cotton used when constructing the barrage in Andhra Pradesh from 1847 to 1852.

[citation needed] He started his career with the Ordnance Survey at Bangor, North Wales, in January 1820, where he was praised for his reports.

In 1844, Cotton recommended the construction of an "anicut" (a dam made in a stream for maintaining and regulating irrigation)[3] and prepared plans for Visakhapatnam port.

It is a gigantic barrier thrown across the river from island to island, in order to arrest the unprofitable progress of its waters to the sea, and to spread them over the surface of the country on either side, thus irrigating copiously land which has hitherto been dependent on tanks or on the fitful supply of water from the river.

Large tracts of land, which had hitherto been left arid and desolate and waste, were thus reached and fertilised by innumerable streams and channels.In 1878, Cotton had to appear before a House of Commons Committee to justify his proposal to build an anicut across the Godavari.

[8] A further hearing in the House of Commons followed by his letter to the then Secretary of State for India reveals his ambition to build the anicut across the Godavari.

[10] In recognition of Cotton's contributions, a new barrage constructed across the Godavari river, upstream of the anicut, was named after him, and dedicated to the nation by the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi in 1982.

During the Godavari Maha Pushkaram festival of 2015, homages were paid to Arthur Cotton, with Nimmala Rama Naidu, the MLA of Pallakollu, offering pinda as per Hindu ancestral rites.