Isambard Kingdom Brunel

The son of noted engineer Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, Isambard K. Brunel was sent to France to be educated at the College of Caen in Normandy and the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris. He rose to prominence when, aged 20, he was appointed as the resident engineer of the Thames foot tunnel[?], his father's greatest achievement. The first major river tunnel ever built, Isambard spent nearly two years trying to drive the horizontal shaft from one side to the other. Two severe incidents of flooding injured the younger Brunel and ended work on the tunnel for several years, though it was eventually completed.

In the mean time, Brunel moved on. In 1833 he was appointed engineer of the Great Western Railway, one of the wonders of Victorian Britain. Running from London to Bristol (and a few years later, to Exeter), the Great Western contained a series of impressive achievements -- viaducts, stations, and tunnels -- that ignited the imagination of the technically minded Britons of the age. Brunel soon became one of the most famous men in Britain on the back of this interest.

Brunel made the controversial choice of using broad gauge (7ft 0.25in or 2.14m) for the line. According to many railway historians, this was an advantageous choice but nonetheless it eventually had to be changed to bring it in line with standard British railway gauge (4ft 8.5in or 1.435m).

Even before the Great Western Railway was opened, he was moving on to his next project -- transatlantic shipping. He used his prestige to convince his railway company employers to build the Great Western, at the time by far the largest steamship in the world. It first sailed in 1837. The Great Britain followed in 1843, and was the first iron-hulled, propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Building on these successes, Brunel turned to a third ship in 1852, even larger than both of its predecessors. The Great Eastern[?] was cutting edge technology for its time -- it was the largest ship ever built until the RMS Lusitania launched in 1906 -- and it soon ran over budget and over schedule in the face of a series of difficult technical problems. The ship is widely perceived as a white elephant; indeed, there are considerable parallels with Howard Hughes' 20th century Spruce Goose. Though a failure at its original purpose of passenger travel, it eventually found a role as a oceanic telegraph cable-layer.

Besides the railway and steam ships, he was also involved in the building of several lengthy bridges, including the Clifton Suspension Bridge near Bristol, and the Royal Albert Bridge[?] near Plymouth, England.

Brunel suffered a stroke just before the Great Eastern made its first voyage to New York, from which he never entirely recovered. He died ten days later and is, like his father, buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

There is an anecdote which states that Box Tunnel on the Great Western railway line is placed such that the sun shines all the way through it on Brunel's birthday. For more information, see the entry on the tunnel.

In 1843, while performing a conjuring trick for the amusement of his children, he accidentally swallowed a half-sovereign coin which became lodged in his windpipe. A special pair of forceps failed to remove it, as did a machine to shake it loose devised by Brunel himself. Eventually, at the suggestion of Sir Marc, IKB was strapped to a board, turned upside-down, and the coin was jerked free.

Many of Brunel's original papers and designs are now held in the Brunel collection (http://www.bris.ac.uk/is/services/specialcollections/brunel) at the University of Bristol.

Brunel was included in the top 10 of the 100 Greatest Britons poll conducted by the BBC and voted for by the public. In the second round of voting, which concluded on November 24, 2002, he placed second behind Winston Churchill.