Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Brunel before the launching of the *Great Eastern*

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (April 9, 1806 – September 15, 1859), FRS was a British engineer, widely considered one of the greatest engineers of all time. Voted the second greatest Briton in a BBC poll (after Winston Churchill)^[1], he is best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, and numerous important bridges. Though his projects were not always successful, they often contained innovative solutions to long standing engineering problems. During his short career, Brunel achieved many engineering 'firsts', including the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river and development of the first propellor-driven steamship, which was at the time also the largest ship ever built.

Brunel's later career was dogged by ill-health and he died young, his health wrecked by a combination of a punishing work schedule, injuries incurred on the job, and his prodigious cigar-smoking habit. He generated much publicity for his endeavours and his achievements are still widely celebrated today.

Early Life

The son of noted engineer Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and Sophia Brunel née Kingdom, Isambard K. Brunel was born in Portsmouth, England on April 9 1806. His father was working there on the block-making machinery for the Portsmouth Block Mills. The young Brunel was sent to France to be educated at the College of Caen in Normandy and the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris.

Isambard rose to prominence when, aged 20, he was appointed as the chief engineer of his father's greatest achievement, the Thames Tunnel which runs beneath the river between Rotherhithe and Wapping. The first major sub-river tunnel ever built, it succeeded where other attempts had failed thanks to Marc Brunel's ingenious tunnelling shield -- the human-powered forerunner of today's mighty tunnelling machines -- which protected workers from cave-in by placing them within a protective casing. Marc Brunel had been inspired to create the shield after observing the habits and anatomy of the shipworm (Teredo navalis). Most modern tunnels are cut in this way, notably the Channel Tunnel between England and France.

Brunel established his Design Offices at 17-18 Duke St, London, and he lived with his family in the rooms above. R.P. Brereton, who became his chief assistant in 1845, was in charge of the office in Brunel's absence, and also took direct responsibility for major construction activities such as the Royal Albert Bridge as Brunel's health declined.

The Thames Tunnel

Isambard worked for nearly two years to create a tunnel under London's River Thames, with operatives driving a horizontal shaft from the one side of the river to the other under the most difficult and dangerous conditions. The composition of the Thames river bed at Rotherhithe was often little more than waterlogged sediment and loose gravel, and although the extreme conditions proved the ingenuity of Brunel's tunnelling machine, the work was hard and hazardous.

The tunnel was often in imminent danger of collapse due to the instability of the river bed, yet the management decided to allow spectators to be lowered down to observe the diggings at a shillling a time. For the workers, the building of the tunnel was particularly unpleasant because the Thames at that time was still little better than an open sewer, so the tunnel was usually awash with foul-smelling, contaminated water. Further complications occurred because the superstitious Irish navvies preferred working in darkness : they believed that the leaking water could not find them if they worked in blackness.

Two severe incidents of flooding halted work for long periods, killing several workers and badly injured the younger Brunel. The latter incident, in 1828, killed Collins and Ball, the two most senior miners, and Brunel himself narrowly escaped death; a water break-in hurled him from a tunnelling platform, knocking him unconscious, and he was washed up to the other end of the tunnel by the surge. As the water rose, by luck he was carried up a service stairway, where he was plucked from almost certain death by an assistant moments before the surge receded. Brunel was seriously hurt (and never fully recovered from his injuries) and the event ended work on the tunnel for several years.

Bridges

Brunel's earliest solo engineering feats started with bridges - the Royal Albert Bridge spanning the River Tamar at Saltash near Plymouth, and an unusual timber-framed bridge near Bridgwater.

He is perhaps best remembered for the breathtaking Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. Spanning over 700ft in width, and nominally 200ft over the River Avon below, it was designed to be the longest bridge in the world at the time. Brunel submitted four designs to a committee headed by Thomas Telford and gained approval to commence with the project. Afterwards, Brunel wrote to his brother-in-law, the politician Benjamin Hawes: "...of all the wonderful feats I have performed, since I have been in this part of the world, I think yesterday I performed the most wonderful. I produced unanimity among 15 men who were all quarrelling about that most ticklish subject - taste". He did not live to see it built, although his colleagues and admirers at the Institution of Civil Engineers felt the bridge would be a fitting memorial, and started to raise new funds and to amend the design. Work started in 1862, and was complete by 1864, five years after Brunel's death.^[2]

The Great Western Railway

In 1833, before the Thames Tunnel was complete, Brunel was appointed chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, one of the wonders of Victorian Britain, running from London to Bristol (and finally Exeter). Drawing on his experience with the Thames Tunnel, the Great Western contained a series of impressive achievements — soaring viaducts, specially designed stations, and vast tunnels including the famous Box Tunnel, which was the longest railway tunnel in the world at that time. Brunel's achievements ignited the imagination of the technically minded Britons of the age and he soon became one of the most famous men in the country on the back of this interest.

Brunel made the controversial choice of using broad gauge of 7 ft 0.25 in (2140 mm) for the line, even though almost all British railways to date had used the 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge. Brunel said that this was nothing more than a carry-over from the mine railways George Stephenson had worked on prior to making the world's first passenger railway. Brunel worked out through mathematics and a series of trials that his broader gauge was the optimum railway size for providing stability and a comfortable ride to passengers (in addition to allowing for bigger carriages and more freight capacity).

After Brunel's death the decision was taken that there should be a standard gauge for all railways in the country. Despite the Great Western's claim of proof that its broad gauge was the better (disputed by at least one Brunel historian) the decision was made to go with Stephenson's narrow gauge — mainly because this had already covered a far greater amount of the country. In any event, by May 1892 (when the broad gauge was abolished) the Great Western had already been relaid to "dual gauge" (both broad and narrow) and so the transition was a relatively painless one.

Brunel's "atmospheric caper"

Another of Brunel's interesting though ultimately unsuccessful technical innovations was the atmospheric railway, the extension of the GWR southward from Exeter towards Plymouth (technically the South Devon Railway (SDR), though supported by the GWR). Instead of using locomotives, the trains were moved by Clegg and Samuda's patent system of atmospheric (vacuum) traction, the evacuation being done by stationary engines at a series of pumping stations. The section from Exeter to Newton (now Newton Abbot) was completed on this principle, and trains ran at approximately 20 miles per hour (32 km/h). 15 inch (381 mm) pipes were used on the level portions, and 22 inch (559 mm) pipes were intended for the steeper gradients. Unfortunately the technology required the use of leather flaps to seal the vacuum pipes, the leather had to be kept supple by the use of tallow, and tallow is attractive to rats; the result was inevitable - the flaps were eaten and air-powered vacuum service lasted less than a year, from 1847 (experimental services began in September; operationally from February 1848) to September 10 1848. The accounts of the SDR for 1848 suggest that the atmospheric traction cost 3s 1d per mile (£0.10/km), compared to 1s 4d (£0.04/km) for conventional steam power. The pumping station at Starcross, on the estuary of the River Exe, remains as a striking landmark, and a reminder of the atmospheric railway — which is also commemorated in the name of the village pub. A section of the pipe, without the leather covers, is preserved in Didcot Railway Centre.

Transatlantic shipping

Even before the Great Western Railway was opened, Brunel 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, and intended for voyages to India and Australia. The Great Eastern (originally dubbed Leviathan) was cutting edge technology for its time: almost 700 feet long, fitted out with the most luxurious appointments and capable of carrying over 4000 passengers. It was the first ship that was able to cruise under its own power non-stop from London to New York and it remained the largest ship built until the turn of the century. Like many of Brunel's ambitious projects, the ship soon ran over budget and behind schedule in the face of a series of momentous technical problems.

The ship has been portrayed as a white elephant, but it can be argued that in this case Brunel's failure was principally one of economics -- his ships were simply years ahead of their time. Brunel's vision and engineering innovations made the building of large-scale, screw-driven, all-metal steamships a practical reality, but the prevailing economic and industrial conditions meant that it would be several decades before trans-oceanic steamship travel emerged as a viable industry. Though a failure at its original purpose of passenger travel, it eventually found a role as an oceanic telegraph cable-layer, and the Great Eastern remains one of the most important vessels in the history of shipbuilding.

Illnesses and death of Brunel

In 1843, while performing a conjuring trick for the amusement of his children, Brunel accidentally inhaled 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, Isambard was strapped to a board and turned upside-down, and the coin was jerked free.

Brunel suffered a stroke in 1859, just before the Great Eastern made its first voyage to New York. He died ten days later at the age of 53, and was buried, like his father, at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. His son, Henri Marc Brunel, also enjoyed some success as a civil engineer.

Legacy

"Engineers are extremely necessary for these purposes; wherefore it is requisite that, besides being ingenious, they should be brave in proportion." wrote Nicholson's British Encyclopaedia, 1909.^[3]

A major programme of events celebrating the life and work of Brunel is planned for the bicentenary of his birth under the name Brunel 200.

Like many of Brunel's bridges, the Thames Tunnel is still in use today, in this case as part of the London Underground. The Brunel Engine House at Rotherhithe once housed the steam engines that powered the tunnel pumps. It still stands and it is now a museum dedicated to the work and lives of Marc and Isambard Brunel. The top of the brick caisson sunk into the ground at the site of the original tunnel mouth also survives and it is located just outside the Engine House.

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.

Many of Brunel's original papers and designs are now held in the Brunel collection at the University of Bristol.

In 1975, noted British animator Bob Godfrey was awarded an Oscar for his short Great, an irreverent look at Brunel and his times.

Brunel was included in the top 10 of the 100 Greatest Britons poll conducted by the BBC and voted for by the public. Each of the finalists in the poll was featured in an hour-long documentary. An admiring Jeremy Clarkson wrote and presented the programme about Brunel. In the second round of voting, which concluded on November 24 2002, Brunel placed second behind Winston Churchill. The building of the Great Eastern was also dramatised in an episode of the recent BBC TV series Seven Wonders of the Industrial World (2003).

There are many monuments and memorials commemorating his achievements in the GWR area, including a statue at Paddington station, and a collection of streets around St David's station in Exeter, giving access to student residences of the University of Exeter, that bear his names — Isambard Terrace, Kingdom Mews, and Brunel Close. A road and school in his home town of Portsmouth are named in his honour, as well as the towns largest Wetherspoons pub. Brunel University in West London is also named after the great Brunel. Although not of any real architectural merit, the Brunel shopping centre in Bletchley, Milton Keynes is also named after Brunel.

Brunel is also to be featured on the reverse side of the £2 coin in the UK in 2006 to commemorate the bicentenary of his birth.

Notes and References

^ BBC News Churchill voted greatest briton Retrieved Feb. 11, 2006.
^ BBC History Brunel: 'The Practical Prophet of Technological Innovation' by Professor G Ross Peters Retrieved Feb. 17, 2006.
^ Hay, Peter. Brunel: Engineering Giant (Paperback), Trafalgar Square Publishing, 1985. ISBN 0713451726