HF: The venerable firm of Arnholds, Karberg Company was founded in 1866 and I believe has had a continuous presence in Hong Kong since then, barring when it was liquidated during World War One. The company currently deals in building materials and engineering equipment distribution. Arnholds seems to have had close connections to the Asiatic Petroleum Co. Ltd about which we […]
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Melanie Li, Manager – Corporate and Community History at the Hong Kong Heritage Project (HKHP), has kindly given permission for the following script archived at HKHP to be used on our website. HF: Thanks to IDJ for image separation and enhancement, and for supplying their captions. The Shanghai Gas Co., Ltd. (Shanghai Gas) was formed in 1865 to provide […]
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Some brief notes on the Swire Waste Services Ltd. Swire BFI Waste Services Ltd was apparently formed in 1987 as a 50:50 joint venture with Browning Ferris Industries. I am assuming, until corrected that BFI refers to Browning- Ferris Industries a North American waste management company that was disbanded in 1999. In 1993 Swire BFI won a 50-year landfill management contract in […]
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HF: The Tai Lam Chung Reservoir was the first reservoir built in Hong Kong after the Second World War. Construction work commenced in 1952, was completed in 1957 and officially opened by the Governor, Sir Alexander Grantham on 7th December of that year. The reservoir, with a storage capacity of 20 million cubic metres, was formed by a main dam across the […]
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The Aberdeen Reservoirs (香港仔水塘) are a group of two reservoirs, consisting of the Upper Aberdeen Reservoir (香港仔上水塘) and the Lower Aberdeen Reservoir (香港仔下水塘), above Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island. The Aberdeen Reservoirs were built to augment Pok Fu Lam Reservoir in providing water supply to the west of Hong Kong Island. The Lower Aberdeen Reservoir, with a capacity of 44.2 million imperial gallons […]
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Waste Disposal in Hong Kong Text extracted from ‘Engineering in Hong Kong-50 years of Achievements’ published 1997. Many thanks to IDJ for sending this. The EPD first drew up plans for the development of a network of refuse transfer stations and three strategic landfills in the late 1980s. In order to tap private sector expertise in waste management, the department […]
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A tenuous, but intriguing, connection to Hong Kong’s disposal of sewage and refuse in around the 1880s. Can anyone confirm this link and suggest which of William Warner’s methods were adopted here? “The firm of Goddard and Massey started with Henry Goddard and appears to have had its origins in Nottingham between c1844-48. In 1848 Henry Goddard is listed as an ironmonger […]
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Our article about the origins of the Aberdeen Gasometer led us to discover that it was originally constructed by Samuel Cutler & Sons of Millwall, London and Telford, UK. This in turn provided both Stephen Davies and IDJ with the opportunity to link this particular gasometer design to Cutler’s Patent Guide Framing which was patented in 1888. Very familiar to any UK city […]
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HF: The image below shows the developing Tsuen Wan in the foreground, the Caltex oil storage depot in the background with a hill top cemetery above. JKW: I can confirm this, because I grew up here. My father worked for Caltex as a civil engineer supervising work at the oil terminal, as he called it, from 1973 to 1978. We […]
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Can anyone provide further information about the GEC of China Ltd in Hong Kong? This 1924 advert has their location at Queen’s Buildings In Hong Kong. Until corrected I am presuming that the company was a subsidiary of the British General Electric Company (often abbreviated to GEC) which came into being in 1886 (1888?) when the original General Electric Apparatus […]
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