A former Wits University football player and member of the team that produced South Africa’s first petrol from coal, William Henry Atteridge (BSc Mech Eng 1945, BSc Elec Eng 1946) died in Witbank of cancer on 20 August 2010, aged 85. Born in Pretoria on 22 January 1925, Atteridge attended Pretoria Boys High School and completed an Eskom apprenticeship after graduating. He then held engineering posts in Somerset East where he met his wife, to whom he was married for 57 years. At Sasol from 1956, he led the construction of storage tanks and secured coalmines for storage. He oversaw all South African oil and petroleum products in 1966, when the Industrial Development Corporation seconded him to manage its Strategic Fuel Fund. He later established a refinery and mining complex at the Tsumeb/Kombat Mine in Namibia and was instrumental in Eskom supplying electricity to this country. He returned to South Africa in 1971 to erect a water separation plant at Newmont’s O’kiep complex. He retired as Port Elizabeth’s Deputy City Electrical Engineer in 1990 and moved to Witbank in 2005.
Source: WITSReview April 2011