OBSERVATORY
295772
I am able to publish a most interesting photograph to-day, showing part of old Kowloon. It is a photo of the time-ball when it was situated at the Water Police station, a position it occupied until twenty-five years ago. The picture is particularly topical owing to the fact that the time-ball recently ceased to function, the dropping of the ball being discontinued after 4 p.m. on June 30 last. The time-ball had, indeed, become something of an anachronism in these days of radio communication, and few people could have found the ball of convenience, except such harbour folk as were unable either to pick up the broadcast time signals or to get close enough to shore to read the time on either the Railway Station tower or on Gloucester Building, to say nothing of the clocks on the Star Ferry wharf, the Kowloon Godowns, Kowloon Docks, and elsewhere!
The history of the time-ball is interesting, for it was erected at the Water Police station, as shown in this photograph, over fifty years ago, in the Eighties. It functioned there until the beginning of 1908, being shifted to the Signal Hill site on January 8 of that year. In 1928 a new storey was added to the tower it occupied, making the signal more easily visible to shipping.
The time-ball was operated in conjunction with the Royal Observatory at Kowloon, and something of the history of the Observatory might appropriately be given at this juncture.
The Royal Observatory originated in consequence of representations made to the Government by a number of shipmasters, who were supported by the manager at the time of the Peninsular and Oriental S.N. Company. These representations were drawn up in 1877, the authorities being requested to arrange a daily dropping of a time-ball. The Surveyor General of that year (the old title for the Director of Public Works), Mr. J. M. Price, thereupon drew up plans for the Observatory which was established in due course on Mount Elgin, Kowloon.
The scheme was somewhat expanded in 1881 by Major H. S. Palmer, of the Royal Engineers. Since then, of course, the advance of meteorological science, with seismometers, radio apparatus, and so forth, has seen our Observatory equipped with new instruments of the latest pattern, a new typhoon mast, a fresh system of typhoon signals, and a larger staff.
A photograph is published to-day which, though little more than a quarter century old, records a phase of changing Kowloon which should be noted. It shows Signal Hill (Blackhead's Point) with its time-ball (no longer in use; being discontinued in the middle of this year); which time-ball had been erected at the Water Police Station when that building was completed, being moved to its present site in 1908 (see 16-8-33).
It is interesting to note that prior to being erected in the Water Police Station compound (see also old photograph published on 16-8-33) a time-ball was dropped aboard a naval vessel in the harbour.
In the Hong Kong Telegraph of July 31, 1882, reference is made to a notice appearing in the Government Gazette stating that on and after August 1, 1882, a red ball would be dropped from the main up-mast of H.M.S. Victor Emanuel. It was dropped at 1 p.m. daily.