Invention of drip?

(September 2002)

My apologies - I'm behind on a deadline and in a rush (like we all seem to be these days). I seem to remember that drip irrigation was invented or discovered in the United States and then developed intensively in Israel. Can you point me to when drip irrigation as we know it was actually invented? And confirm or refute that it was invented in the U.S.? This is for a small news article, so anything you could provide would help.

W. Bryan Smith

The concept of drip irrigation goes back at least to the ancient Egyptians who placed porous pots in the soil and filled them with water. There are patents along the lines of modern drip irrigation out of Germany in the 1930's. The development of the plastics industry made these ideas practical. Immediately after the war, in 1946, both French and British greenhouse growers used microtubes to a substantial commercial extent.

Dick Chapin, in the USA, quickly followed this lead from Europe (Dick, correct me if I am wrong). Simcha Blass was a British Jew working for a water department in England. He retired to Israel and suggested drip irrigation for field crops to Kibbutz Hatzerim in the mid 1960's. He took the microtube and wound it around the plastic tube, to hold it in place. He then developed this into a molded spiral with a sleeve placed over it, to form a flow path. This was the first in-line dripper.

Rodney Ruskin

Dick Chapin along with Norm Smith established the first drip irrigation system in the US in 1964 at Old Westbury Gardens on Long Island. Norm, at that time, was the county agricultural agent in Nassau Co. and eventually moved to New Jersey as county agricultural agent for Cumberland County. I have a picture of Norm and Dick with the memorial at the Westbury Gardens dedication site hanging on the wall of my office.

Ray Samulis

From the Avocado Grower magazine 3/78 article "Trendal Plot". Alan Myers Stated that Don Guston, farm advisor "He is, after all the father of drip irrigation in America. In the artical Gustafson explains "The concept of drip irrigation goes back to Biblical times, but it realy started in the greenhouses of England by a man named Simca Blass in 1959. Chapin and Gustafson new each other.

Howard Mueller

Hawaii Sugar and Pineapple growers looked at drip irrigation in the late 60's, when trips were made to Israel and other places where innovative work was in progress, but drip was expensive, not very reliable, and was only used in high value greenhouse experiments. No commercial use of drip irrigation in row crops could be found. The HSPA Experiment Station (Hawaii Sugar Planter's Association) had a great deal to do with making commercial row crop drip irrigation a reality in the early seventies. The only affordable row crop drip products available at the time were single wall thin gage hose products with punched holes. Hose with plug-in or in-line emitters were too expensive.

Flow rates with the punched holes in a single wall product were unacceptably high and the uniformity and plugging problems were unacceptable. The Experiment Station came up with the idea of the two chamber hose to get the flow rates under control by providing an inner conveyance chamber, which bled water into an outer distribution chamber, which in turn bled water out onto the ground at low flow rates. A ratio of four outlet holes for every distribution hole seemed to give acceptable flow rates and good distribution. With 0.018" outlets every 48 inches (inner) and 12 inches (outer), and 10 psi in the inner chamber, about 1 psi was provided in the outer chamber with a flow rate of about half a gpm per hundred feet, if I remember correctly. Several hundred feet was glued up and tried out, and the concept was sent out to a variety of manufacturers to see if anyone was interested in producing the two chamber concept. Only two manufacturers came back with anything that was workable.

Dick Chapin, of course, with his "twin wall" product made from polyethylene film. The Chapin Turbulent Twin-Wall of today evolved from that beginning. The other was Don Mock of Anjac Plastics, a plastic products extrusion company, who figured out how to extrude a "BiWall" product with holes burned in it using a laser. Anjac Plastics went on to become Reed Irrigation, then Hardie Irrigation, and eventually was bought by Toro. Today's Aquatraxx evolved from those days. Another historically important drip product was started by Davies Alport in the late 70's when he began development on his ideas for a turbulent flow path drip tape. His Turbo-Tape in the early 80's evolved into today's T-Tape, a major force in today's drip irrigation market.

Good filtration and good biological controls are essential for the success of row crop drip irrigation, and the Experiment Station in Hawaii again found answers to these problems. There were really no commercially available economical sand media filters available. Screen filters just didn't work, as the organics in Hawaii's waters extruded through the screens and plugged up the drip systems. The first dependable inexpensive sand media filters were produced in the early 70's by Al Wilson of the Engine Cooler Company in California. That product evolved into the Yardney sand media filters of today. The Experiment Station also found that chlorine was the safest dependable and economical biological control to prevent plugging due to biological growth in the drip systems over time. Chlorine in gas form, liquid form and solid form has been used ever since to keep these drip systems operating dependably.

Bill Pyle