HF: This Michael Rogge film from 1962 is of interest as it begins with the Peak Tram and views of HK harbour showing how much has been reclaimed in the last half century. 0.13-0.50 Peak Tram and views from the Peak 0.51-1.20 Views of HK Harbour 1.21-2.07 Views of and from the Peak 2.08- 2.38 Repulse Bay […]
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HF: The following article has been extracted from the Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography. The article about George Ernest Marden and John Louis Marden was written by Robert Nield and first published in the Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography, edited by May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn. The publisher, HK University Press, has kindly granted permission for it to be posted here, but […]
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HF: Chavalier R Pescio was a man with vision. Especially when it came to trams and tunnels in Hong Kong. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 11 August 1909 contains this article which notes “rents in the Colony of Hongkong are abnormally so, more than in any part of the world in proportion to the accomodation offered”. Even then […]
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HF: I was told many years ago that Hong Kong had the most ferry routes of any city in the world. And that Sydney was second and Seattle third. If that was true back in the 1980s it may not be so in 2014. During this period I have seen several routes vanish, including Jordan Road to Central, a wonderful […]
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IDJ: After the war the school was re-established catering for up to two-hundred pupils at a time. In 1952, the school was absorbed into the Wheelock Marden group of companies. One result of Typhoon Wanda in 1962 was that the school’s hangars housing its training facilities were destroyed, along with a number of its aircraft. Flying instruction then ceased to […]
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IDJ: Probably ‘the first’ formal engineering training school in Hong Kong was the Far East Flying Training School Ltd established as a private venture in November 1933 at Kai Tak Airport. Pupils from Hong Kong, China, Macao and many countries in Asia attended class-room courses on aeroplane structures, engine technology, as well as the use of hand-tools and workshop machine […]
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James Chan: Dragages Hong Kong, is a very familiar company name on signs at major construction projects around Hong Kong. It’s parent company is Bouygues Construction The company was founded in Vietnam in 1902 as Société Française Industrielle D’Extreme-Orient. It undertook its first project, the dredging and maintenance of a 2,000 kilometre canal system in the Mekong Delta. In 1910 […]
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IDJ: Before HAECO came into existence, three companies offered aircraft maintenance services at Kai Tak. JAMCO and PAMAS merged to become HAECO (Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company) on 1 November 1950. CNAC disappeared from the scene in 1949 when the government in China changed hands and CNAC’s assets were then subjected to a long drawn out legal battle in the […]
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IDJ has sent these extracts from a 1908 book which describe the company and show photographs of its operations. The company was founded in 1862, The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited (now known as Towngas) was Hong Kong’s first public utility and its original generating plant, the first in Asia, stood on the waterfront at West Point near Whitty Street. […]
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Vaudine England has kindly sent a link to what she describes as a typically 1900-era directory of the European empires in the east. The author was D Warren Smith. We have already posted the following extracts from this account, Part One – Industries in Hong Kong, Part Two – Shipyards in Hong Kong, and Part Three – The Peak District […]
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