Nils F. Ambursen

He was the founder of Ambursen Hydraulic Construction Company and was known for his influential dam designs in the early 20th century.

[2] Working for the B. F. Sturtevant Company in Hyde Park, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1903, Ambursen developed an innovative concrete slab and buttress dam for an industrial client in Theresa, New York.

Ambursen's concrete-slab-and-buttress design used far less material than a traditional gravity dam making it both a significant engineering advance and cost effective for clients.

Civil engineer George Freeman received his own November 1912 patent on a modified version of the concrete buttress dam used there.

[9] Today perhaps fifty Ambursen-type dams from the post-World War II era stand outside the United States.