Panchanan Karmakar

Panchanan Karmakar (Mallick) (died c. 1804) was an Indian Bengali inventor, born at Tribeni, Hooghly, Bengal Presidency, British India, hailed from Serampore.

[1] His wooden Bengali alphabet and typeface had been used until Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar proposed a simplified version.

[2] Apart from Bangla, Karmakar developed type in 14 languages, including Arabic, Persian, Marathi, Telugu, Burmese and Chinese.

In order to print Nathaniel Brassey Halhed's A Grammar of the Bengal Language, he needed a Bangla type.

[1] Under the supervision of English typographer Charles Wilkins, Karmakar[4] created the first Bengali typeface for printing.