Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806 - 1859)
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the most versatile, audacious and inspirational engineers of the nineteenth century. Brunel was born on April 9, 1806, in Portsmouth. In a short lifespan he built 25 railway lines, more than 100 bridges, including five suspension bridges, eight pier and dock systems, three ships and a prefabricated army field hospital.

By his premature death in 1859, the best of England's engineers was lost, the man with the greatest originality of thought, the most extraordinary power of execution, and the most amazing boldness about his visions. The commercial world thought him extravagant; but although he was so, great things are not done by those who sit down and count the cost of every thought and act.

Vision and expertise
Today, in an age where space exploration is possible and travel around the world commonplace, it is difficult for us to comprehend the scale and complexity of a new railway like the Great Western. But take a trip along his railways, even today, and by opening your eyes to the scenery you can still appreciate what remarkable vision and expertise the great man had.

For among Brunel's gifts was an ability to understand that, if passengers were to fully appreciate the romance of the railway, its engineering had to be invisible. The trains should float over the landscape with such apparent ease that their passengers did not notice if they were climbing hills or fording water.

In order to achieve this, Brunel and his team designed numerous viaducts, tunnels, embankments and sea defences. Arguably, his greatest challenge, and achievement, was on the Cornish Railway where he designed the Royal Albert railway bridge to cross the River Tamar at its narrowest point of 1,100 feet at Saltash, while still allowing sufficient height for sailing ships to pass underneath.

His most remarkable feat for the GWR was the Box Tunnel, between Bath and Chippenham. This amazing tunnel was 2 miles in length, and took almost 6 years to complete. When the crews funneling from each end finally met in the middle, they were found to be a mere 1¼ inches out of alignment. Brunel oversaw every aspect of railway design, from the track itself to the track layout, bridges, tunnels, rolling stock, even the lamp posts for the railway stations! He was not above rolling up his sleeves and joining his workmen in their digging.

Brunel followed his new passion for railways around the globe, designing lines in Italy, Australia, and India. He was responsible for over 1,000 miles of track in Britain. He was famous for his railway bridge design, and his Maidenhead Bridge had the flattest brick arch in the world. He also pioneered the use of compressed air to sink pier foundations underwater.

Consuming though his railway projects were, Brunel devoted considerable time and energy to other projects, such as his 1855 design of a 1,000-bed prefabricated field hospital to be shipped to the Crimean War, as well as a series of steamships.

The SS Great Western, a wooden paddle steamer, was launched at Bristol in 1837 and was to miss, by three hours, being the first ship to cross the Atlantic under steam. Six years later, the SS Great Britain took to the sea as the first liner iron ship with a screw propeller. By the early 1850s, Brunel determined to solve the refuelling problem by building a big enough steamship to carry all the coal required for a round trip to Australia.

While the SS Great Western had paddle wheels and the SS Great Britain had a screw propeller, the SS Great Eastern had both to allow her to operate in the shallow waters of the River Hooghly in India, where the screw propeller would not be completely immersed.

But the project was fraught with financial difficulties and her builder John Scott Russell, who had greatly underestimated the cost, went bankrupt. When construction work recommenced, Brunel faced the problem of getting his huge ship into the water. She finally had to be launched sideways.

Unable to finance a voyage to Australia, the Great Eastern's owners put her on the transatlantic run, but she was too big to compete with the smaller steamers specifically designed for the route.

She was eventually sold for £26,200 in 1884 as a floating music hall. Four years later she was sold to a firm of ship breakers for £16,000. Brunel did not live to see the Great Eastern's demise. Early on in her construction, he became seriously ill and on September 5, 1859, collapsed on the deck after a heart attack.

Isambard Brunel was a short, neat man, who stood just over 5 feet tall. He seems to have been self-conscious about his height, and he favoured tall top hats to make himself appear taller. He was a workaholic, often laboring 18-hour days and sleeping at his office in Duke Street. When Isambard Kingdom Brunel died in London on Sept. 15, 1859, the world lost one of its truly great engineering masters, this sad end does not reflect the fact that no other engineer of any age has matched.