The Hooghly district administration has built an archive on the premises of the Balagarh block development office to display items related to the district’s history, rich heritage and culture.

The archive, which will be inaugurated on Wednesday, is aimed at creating awareness of the district among students and younger generations.

“The Balagarh panchayat samity has hosted the archive in the conference hall and named it after Panchanan Karmakar, who first wood-crafted the Bengali alphabet and typeface for printing in the Bengali language,” said a source.

“It is a tribute to the great inventor and Hooghly’s son of the soil. Karmakar was born at Jirat in Balagarh block. It was Karmakar who in 1778 made it possible to print a book (A Grammar of the Bengal Language) using a Bengali typeface. In 1803, he also developed a Devanagaritypeface,” said Balagarhblock development officerNiladri Sarkar.

The district administration has also planned a gallery dedicated to displaying the works of this great inventor.

Sources said the plan for the archive had been conceived a few months back when local historian and researcher Partha Chattopadhyay, a professor of Jirat College, offered to donate his entire collections of scripts and other items related to Hooghly to the district administration with an appeal for their preservation.