author
Burr Bassell
1858–1905
An early 20th-century consulting engineer, he wrote a focused, practical study of earth-dam design at a time when large waterworks were becoming increasingly important. His surviving work stands out for its clear attention to soils, seepage, and the real construction problems engineers faced.
1 Audiobook
Earth dams, a study
by Burr Bassell
About the author
Burr Bassell was an American engineer and technical writer best remembered for Earth Dams: A Study, published in 1904. The book identifies him as a consulting engineer in New York and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, placing him firmly in the professional world of turn-of-the-century infrastructure.
Earth Dams: A Study is a compact but serious work on the design and construction of earth dams. It covers preliminary investigations, soil behavior, puddle trenches, and examples such as the Tabeaud Dam in California, showing a practical interest in how engineering ideas performed in the field rather than only on paper.
Reliable biographical detail on Bassell is limited in the sources available here, but library and public-domain records consistently list his dates as 1858–1905. Because so little personal information is easy to confirm, his reputation today rests mainly on the usefulness of his engineering writing and the window it offers into civil-engineering practice at the start of the 20th century.