Taught by His Father, Trained by a Clockmaker
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born on 9 April 1806 in Portsmouth. His odd name came from both parents: Isambard from his father, the engineer Marc Brunel, and Kingdom from his mother's family.
His father was his first teacher. He taught Brunel drawing from the age of four, and by eight the boy had learned geometry. He grew up speaking fluent French and was encouraged to sketch buildings and spot faults in their structure. At 14 he was sent to school in France.
Then came a setback. France's top engineering school, the École Polytechnique, turned him down because he was a foreigner. Britain had no engineering degrees at the time. So Brunel stayed in Paris and trained under the master clockmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet, because horology was seen as the finest type of engineering. Breguet praised his talent in letters to his father.
A Tunnel Under the Thames, Inspired by a Worm
Brunel's big break came in 1824, when his father was hired to dig a tunnel under the river Thames. The soil was soft, wet and loose, and an earlier attempt had been abandoned. Marc Brunel found his answer in nature: the shipworm, a mollusc that grinds through wood with its hard shell.
That idea became the tunnelling shield. Twelve workers dug from inside a huge cast-iron frame, one small section at a time, while brick walls were built right behind them. Brunel soon became the resident engineer, at about 20 years old.
He threw himself into it. At one point he stayed in the tunnel for 96 hours, sleeping only in short breaks. In 1827 a banquet was even held inside the tunnel, with the Duke of Wellington as a guest. Brunel left the project in 1828, and it was finished in 1843 to a different design.
A Railway Built for Speed
In 1833, Brunel became engineer of the new Great Western Railway between London and Bristol. He wrote to the backers: "The route I will survey will not be the cheapest, but it will be the best." He even turned a carriage into a mobile office with a bed and his equipment. It became known as the "Flying Hearse".
He aimed for a line with as few curves and slopes as possible. His Maidenhead Railway Bridge was the flattest arched bridge ever built at the time. Some said it was impossible. Brunel left the supports in place but not touching the bridge, until a storm swept them away and showed the bridge standing fine. It still carries trains up to ten times heavier today.
The Box Tunnel, then the longest on Britain's railways, finished the line in 1841. London to Bristol took 5 and a half hours, compared to 15-20 hours by road.
The Gauge War and the Pipe Railway
Brunel built his rails 7 feet and a quarter inch apart, a broad gauge he believed was faster and smoother. He quietly removed the gauge rule from the railway's bill without telling the directors. Almost every other British line used a narrower gauge, so goods trains waited for hours where the two met.
In 1845 a royal commission studied the problem, and Brunel suggested a race. His older engine Ixion averaged 53 miles per hour, while the narrow-gauge engine derailed at that speed. He still lost. The narrower gauge became the standard, and the Great Western finished converting in 1892.
His boldest bet was the atmospheric railway in Devon. Trains had no engine; pumps pushed air through a pipe to drive them, reaching about 68 miles per hour. But the valve leaked, the pipe froze in winter, and rats chewed it. It closed in less than a year.
Ships Too Big for Their Time
In 1835 Brunel joked that the railway should continue by steamship to New York. The board took him seriously. Experts said no steamship could carry enough coal to cross the Atlantic. One critic said you might as well talk of sailing to the moon.
Brunel did the maths. A ship's carrying space grows faster than the water's drag as it gets bigger, so a bigger ship is more efficient. His SS Great Western left later than its smaller rival, the Sirius, but reached New York the same day. The Sirius crew had to burn cargo for fuel; the Great Western still had coal to spare.
Next came the SS Great Britain, the first ship with an iron hull and a propeller to cross the Atlantic. Then the SS Great Eastern, 700 feet long, built for over 4,000 people. It flopped as a liner but helped lay the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable.
