Isambard Kingdom Brunel
He once swallowed a coin during a magic trick and had to be hung upside down to cough it up. Then he went on to redraw the map of Britain.
Published
,_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_-_restoration1.jpg){kind=link}
Quick Facts
- Born
- 9 April 1806, Portsmouth
- Died
- 15 September 1859, London, aged 53
- Known for
- Great Western Railway, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, SS Great Britain
- Father
- Marc Brunel, French-born engineer who built the Thames Tunnel
- Early brush with death
- Nearly killed in the Thames Tunnel flooding of 1828
- Famous trademark
- A tall stovepipe hat and a very large supply of cigars
- Broad gauge
- 7 ft and a quarter inch (about 2.14 m) between the rails
- Where to see his work
- Bristol, Box Tunnel, Paddington, Saltash, Rotherhithe
The boy who swallowed a coin
In 1843 Brunel was entertaining his children with a conjuring trick when a half-sovereign slipped into his windpipe. He coughed, choked and could not shift it. Doctors tried and failed. The solution was dramatic. A special frame was built so he could be strapped to it and tipped upside down, and a gentle tapping on his back finally dislodged the coin. It's a fitting story for a man who rarely did anything by halves. He was a prodigy long before that. Born in Portsmouth to the engineer Marc Brunel, he was sent to school in France and came home with a love of mathematics and drawing.
Trapped beneath the Thames
At 20, Brunel became resident engineer on his father's Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel known to have been driven under a navigable river. It was brutal work, with the river leaking in and the air foul with sewage. In 1828 the Thames broke through and flooded the workings. Brunel was swept off his feet, injured badly and spent months recovering. Six workers died. The tunnel was eventually completed and opened in 1843, and it is still in use today as part of the railway network between Rotherhithe and Wapping. The near-fatal experience didn't dent his ambition. It may have sharpened it.
Why his trains ran on wider tracks
At just 27, Brunel became engineer of the Great Western Railway, linking London and Bristol. He wanted the smoothest, fastest ride possible, so he chose a gauge of seven feet and a quarter inch rather than the standard four feet eight and a half. The result was speed and stability, and routes so level they were nicknamed Brunel's billiard table. The Box Tunnel near Bath, almost two miles long, was a marvel of its age. Paddington station, with its soaring iron and glass roof, became the London terminus. But the rest of the country was building to the narrower gauge. Where the two met, passengers and goods had to be transferred. Parliament backed the standard gauge, and the last broad gauge track was converted in 1892.
A bridge, a bet and a funeral
Brunel won a competition to design a bridge across the Avon Gorge in Bristol when he was only 24. His Clifton Suspension Bridge was not finished in his lifetime, as funds ran dry. It opened in 1864, five years after his death, with its chains reportedly reused from his Hungerford Bridge in London. It became a symbol of Bristol, and its tower and 214-metre span still sweep above the gorge. At Saltash he built the Royal Albert Bridge across the Tamar, linking Devon and Cornwall. It opened in 1859, and he was too ill to walk across it. He was carried over on a railway truck, lying down, to see it for himself.
Ships bigger than anyone had dared
Brunel's boldest idea was to extend the Great Western Railway across the Atlantic. His SS Great Western of 1838 was designed to prove steamships could cross the ocean on a regular schedule. Then came the SS Great Britain, launched in 1843 in Bristol, the first iron-hulled, screw-propelled ship to cross the Atlantic. The Great Eastern, which he designed with John Scott Russell, was a monster. It was by far the largest ship in the world when launched in 1858. The launch was a disaster, as the ship stuck on the slipway for months. It later laid the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable. Brunel suffered a stroke shortly before the ship's trial voyage and died days after hearing of an explosion on board. He never saw her put to sea.
Where to find him today
You can still see Brunel's mark across the country. The SS Great Britain is preserved in the very dry dock in Bristol where she was built. Paddington's great train shed still shelters travellers, and the Clifton Suspension Bridge still carries traffic over the Avon Gorge. The Thames Tunnel is used by trains, the Royal Albert Bridge still carries the main line into Cornwall, and the Box Tunnel is part of the main line to Bristol. In a 2002 BBC poll of the greatest Britons, he came second only to Winston Churchill.
Notable people
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel
- Marc Brunel
- John Scott Russell
- Sophia Kingdom Brunel
- Daniel Gooch
Keep exploring
_hires.jpg){kind=link}
Jane Austen
Published
Jane Austen never put her name on a novel in her lifetime, wrote at a tiny table in a busy sitting room, and now stares out from the £10 note.
Dylan Thomas
Published
He named a Welsh village after a rude phrase spelled backwards, and he's on the Sgt. Pepper cover. Dylan Thomas packed a lot into 39 years.
Alan Turing
Published
Alan Turing once chained his tea mug to a radiator at Bletchley Park, and cracked codes that shortened the Second World War. His story is odder, and sadder, than the legend.