ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some of the key stages in the development of the understanding and control of groundwater. It discusses the history of some of the technology used for groundwater lowering, especially in relation to early applications in the United Kingdom. The latter part of the seventeenth century was a watershed in the beginnings of an understanding of the replenishment of groundwater. Gradually, there arose the concept of a ‘hydrological cycle’. In 1942, Meinzer, chief of the Ground Water Division of the United States Geological Survey, edited a comprehensive outline on the development of fieldwork and theoretical analysis in groundwater hydrology up to that time. In a pedantic context, groundwater modelling involves the use of models or analogues to investigate or simulate the nature of groundwater flow. The origins of groundwater models and analogues are to be found in groundwater theory, but in scientific fields such as electricity and heat flow.
