Willard Gardner and Walter Gardner developed a negative head permeameter as early as 1939. Dixon (1975) developed a closed-top ring infiltrometer to quantify macropores. Water is applied to a closed-top system, which permits the imposition of negative head or pressure on the ponded water surface. Negative tension can be considered as simulating a positive soil air pressure, created by a negative air pressure above ponded surface water. A simplification was made by Topp and Zebchuk (1985). The limitation of this device is the infiltration has to be started by ponding the closed-top infiltrometer (applying a positive head), then adjusted to a negative pressure. Little research effort was continued in this area, instead attention has been given mainly to the sorptivity apparatus of Dirksen (1975) which used a ceramic plate as a base. Based on this design, Brent Clothier and Ian White (1981) developed the "sorptivity tube" which can provide a constant negative potential (tension) on the soil surface. However, the "sorptivity tube" had many shortcomings, hence modifications to the design led to the development of the "disc permeameter" by Perroux and White (1988) from CSIRO. In the US it is known as the "tension infiltrometer".