Simcha Blass Simcha Blass Simcha Blass (November 27, 1897 – July 18, 1982; ) was a Polish-Israeli engineer and inventor who developed the drip irrigation system with his son Yeshayahu. Simcha Blass was born in Warsaw, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire, to an Orthodox Jewish family. He was active in the Jewish self-defense units organized in Warsaw to defend Jews during the end of World War I. His engineering studies in Warsaw were interrupted by the Polish-Soviet War and completed after that war. During the war, he was recruited to the Polish Army, there he invented for the
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: a Centennial Celebration Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: a Centennial Celebration Edited by Byron Preiss, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: a Centennial Celebration () is an anthology of short stories collected for the centenary of Raymond Chandler's birth, in 1988. Containing 23 stories by such noted crime-writers as Max Allan Collins, Sara Paretsky, Loren D. Estleman, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Ed Gorman and Eric Van Lustbader each tale takes place in one of the years that Philip Marlowe was active as a private eye (1935–1959). As well, the anthology includes "The Pencil", Chandler's last Marlowe short story. A second edition, published in 1999, contained an additional