Development of the Hong Kong Observatory

After Hong Kong became a British colony, the Royal Society proposed to set up a meteorological observatory in Hong Kong in 1879 because of its geographical location suitable for studying typhoons and other meteorology. At that time, in East Asia, only Shanghai Xujiahui, Manila, Beijing, Jakarta and Indonesia had professional meteorological observation stations. The first two are run by Jesuits, and Hong Kong is just in between. Since typhoons often do harm to Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government also supports the suggestion of the Royal Society. 1In the summer of 883, the Hong Kong Observatory was formally established, with Dr. Dobeck as the head of the astronomy department. The original duties of the Observatory include: timing, meteorology, magnetic field, hydrological observation, etc., which have nothing to do with astronomy, but China people who were responsible for translation at that time misinterpreted it as "Observatory" and it has been used ever since. 19 12 On July 1997, King George V conferred the title of Royal Hong Kong Observatory on the Hong Kong Observatory until the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The Observatory joined the International Meteorological Organization (the predecessor of the World Meteorological Organization) on 1948 and began to use high-tech instruments for weather forecasting. 1949, the observatory began to use radiosondes and radar sounding systems to forecast meteorological data, and introduced the first weather radar in 1959. 1964, the automatic map transmission signal of polar orbit satellite is received. 1973, the first computer system of the Observatory was put into use. Two years later, in 1975, the observatory set up three sets of dedicated circuits to exchange meteorological data, including Hong Kong to Tokyo (1969), Hong Kong to Bangkok (1970) and Hong Kong to Beijing (65430).

1980, the observatory established the first cesium atomic clock time-telling system to provide accurate time-telling signals for Hong Kong. The Observatory has also set up two automatic weather stations at Chek Lap Kok and Sha Tin respectively, and a radiation measurement room at King's Park at 1984 and 1985 respectively. The Observatory set up a homepage on the Internet on 1996, which was one of the earliest Hong Kong government agencies to set up a homepage. In 2000, the Observatory added a set of high-performance servers to improve its ability to process meteorological data. A year later, the Observatory strengthened its website service and began to provide text and audio pages, so that visually impaired people can also obtain weather information online. In addition, the Observatory also launched "WAP" and "PDA" versions of websites for mobile phone users.