History
The reservoirs were completed in 1872 to provide clean drinking water to Greenock. The construction was authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1866 following the typhus epidemic of 1864, related to a continuing problem with unsafe water, which resulted in thousands of deaths in the town.
Read more about this topic: Gryffe Reservoir
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)