Sir William WillcocksDied 29 Jul 1932 at age 79 (born 27 Sep 1852). British civil engineer who proposed and designed the first Aswan (Assuan) Dam (1898-1902) on the River Nile and executed major irrigation projects in South Africa and Turkey. He was born studied engineering in India before moving to Egypt in 1883, becoming director-general of reservoirs. On being asked to find a means of storing Nile water to allow the growth of an extra crop of cotton, he found a depression at Wadi Rayan, into which part of the annual flood waters could be diverted, then fed back into the river in the dry season. When persuaded to build a dam, he designed the Aswan Dam to allow the silt-laden waters of the early weeks of the annual flood to pass through, and only capture for storage the clear water that flowed later in the season. |
