Simcha Blass

Simcha Blass was born in 1897 in Warsaw

Blass was born in Warsaw in 1897, when the city was under the Russian Empire, to an Orthodox Jewish family. He received a Hasidic education and was a Zionist from childhood. In Warsaw he took part in Jewish self-defense groups and was elected to the center of the Hechalutz movement in Poland.

He studied engineering at the Warsaw University of Technology. His studies were interrupted by war, and he finished them after his release from the Polish Army in 1920 and qualified as an engineer.

He later invented a wheat planting machine that was sold in Europe and in Palestine in 1927 but proved uneconomical. From 1930 to 1948 he worked as a water engineer in the Yishuv and was chief engineer and a founder of Mekorot, set up in 1937. In 1946 he planned the first water pipeline to the Negev, which enabled 11 new Jewish settlements.

From 1948 to 1956 he founded and directed the state water institutions, advised the government on water and led the planners of the National Water Carrier. After 1956 he worked with his son on drip irrigation, and the first experimental system was set up in 1959. In 1965 he and Kibbutz Hatzerim founded Netafim, which began production in 1966.

Blass died in 1982.