Elements of Water Supply Engineering

Abstract

Every teacher of water supply engineering is always in search of that best single text which may be used simultaneously with lectures and laboratory work. The search then further develops into a contest between comprehensiveness of treatment and size of volume. It is the reviewer's judgment that compromise between these upper and lower millstones is not feasible in the water supply engineering field. The field of water supply engineering now encompasses so many important subjects that the effort to compress them all into a single text which can be carried around by the student is well-nigh hopeless.The author of the textbook under review, in making this effort at compromise, has done exceedingly well. He safeguards himself in his preface to the first edition by stating that the volume is "in no sense a treatise or a handbook, but is frankly a textbook for study by those who are beginning their study of water supply engineering." He assumes that the reader will have some advance knowledge of applied mechanics, materials of construction and hydraulics. The subject matter which he mentions covers the field of water supply engineering with reasonable thoroughness and good arrangement. The chapter headings cover requirements of municipal water supplies, quantity of water, quality of water, examinations, sources, precipitation, groundwaters and their collection, stream flow, impounding reservoirs (including dams), river and lake intakes, transportation of water, pumps and pumping plants, treatment, chlorination, distribution systems, distribution storage, structural features of the distribution system, operation and maintenance and water works finance. When it is recalled that this vast field is covered in 315 pages of text, with the remainder of the volume devoted to problems and index, it may be readily understood why some criticism may

Foxecasting City Population by the Ratio Method

“…The ratio method has been described, tested, and applied by many authorities since its early, rudimentary use in the mid-1920's (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6), so that its value has become widely known to population forecasters. Despite this great popularity, however, a review of seven representative texts (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13) in the fields of water supply and sanitary engineering disclosed seven accounts-all enthusiastic-of the long discredited analogy (comparative) method; six, of the equally outmoded geometric method; five, of arithmetic projection; two, of logistic extrapolation; four, of miscellaneous methods; and none, of the ratio method.…”