Water means life to all living things. Without it, they perish. The National Association of manufacturers (14) reports that perhaps the largest single user of water is irrigators. It is estimated that anywhere from seventy-five to one-hundred billion gallons of water a day go for irrigation purposes.
There being an ever-increasing need of efficiency in Water use for irrigation purposes, the accurate measurement of water to each irrigator is a prime necessity of every irrigation system. In many areas, the water supply is limited and thereby limits the area of irrigation. The problem, in this case, is that of getting maximum economic production from limited water supplies. This requires great care, both in preparation of the land and in application of the water, since most irrigators are charged for water service by the quantity used. Therefore, systematic measurement of the water to each irrigator is desired.
Stanberry (18) indicates that emphasis should be given to increasing the efficiency of water utilization to permit the farmer to grow the crop he chooses.
The standard unit for the measurement of flowing water in Englishspeaking countries is the cubic foot per second. This may be defined as a stream of such velocity and volume that one cubic foot of water passes a given point in a second of time
