How it began
In the early 1930s a farmer showed water engineer Simcha Blass a large tree that seemed to grow without water. Digging below the dry surface, Blass found that a leaking pipe coupling was feeding a spreading, onion-shaped zone of moist soil that reached the roots of that tree alone. He began experimenting with a device that leaked drops at regular intervals. After leaving government service in 1956 he reopened his private engineering office and worked on the idea with his son Yeshayahu. The first experimental system was set up in 1959, and in the early 1960s Blass developed and patented the method.
How it works
The key step was to release water through larger and longer passageways instead of tiny holes. Inside a plastic emitter, friction slows the water and reduces its pressure so that it leaves as individual drops. Because the passage is wide, very small particles in the water do not block it the way they block a pinhole. The arrival of modern plastics during and after World War II made such emitters practical to manufacture. The resulting dripper is described as the first practical surface drip irrigation emitter.
How it spread
Between 1960 and 1965 Blass developed drip systems and sold them in Israel and abroad. In 1965 he looked for a kibbutz to take the enterprise further and chose Hatzerim in the Negev desert, a community founded in 1946 that wanted to branch out beyond farming. On August 10, 1965, Blass, his son and the kibbutz signed a contract founding the Netafim Irrigation Company, owned 80 percent by Hatzerim and 20 percent by Blass. Production began in 1966. Netafim engineers then developed the online dripper from his original narrow tube design.
Where it stands today
Netafim, the company founded at Kibbutz Hatzerim in 1965, was reported in 2020 to sell drip irrigation equipment in 110 countries. The firm grew out of a desert kibbutz that had been dedicated only to agriculture and was searching for an industry to add. The emitter principle that Blass patented in the early 1960s, slowing water by friction in a plastic passage, remains the starting point of the drippers the company developed afterward.
