Simcha Blass

Simcha Blass (1897 to 1982) was a Polish-born Israeli water engineer and inventor best known for developing the modern drip irrigation system together with his son Yeshayahu. Born in Warsaw, he trained as an engineer after serving in the Polish army, where he devised a wind-measuring instrument for the air force. In Palestine from 1930 to 1948 he was the best-known water engineer of the Jewish community, planned the first modern aqueduct in the Jordan Valley, helped found the national water company Mekorot, and designed the 1946 pipeline that carried water to the Negev. After independence he directed the new state's water institutions and led planning of the National Water Carrier. After noticing a tree thriving beside a leaking pipe coupling, he developed a plastic emitter that slowed water by friction in a long passage, patented in the early 1960s, and in 1965 he and Kibbutz Hatzerim founded the Netafim company to manufacture it.