In the 100 years up to 1860, the work of a small group of engineers made possible the economic and social upheaval in England that we call the Industrial Revolution. Brunel, perhaps, was the most prodigious of them all and many of his works, which challenged and inspired his colleagues during this period, have survived to our own time and some are still in use.
He was born in 1806, the son of a distinguished French engineer, Sir Marc Brunel, who had come to England at the time of the French Revolution. Unlike most engineers of the time, Isambard Brunel received a sound education and practical training - partly in France - before entering his father's office and taking full charge of the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe when he was only 20.
At the age of 26, he was appointed Engineer to the newly-formed Great Western Railway and acted with characteristic boldness and energy. His great civil engineering works on the line between London and Bristol, are used by today's high-speed trains and bear witness to his genius He eventually engineered over 1,200 miles of railway, including lines in Ireland, Italy and Bengal.
Each of his three ships represented a major step forward in naval architecture.
Brunel's other works included docks, viaducts, tunnels and buildings and the remarkable prefabricated hospital, with its air-conditioning and drainage systems for use in the Crimean War. Inevitably, in such a prolific career, there were setbacks and disappointments such as the atmospheric railway but he readily admitted his mistakes. Indeed he himself suffered financially by supporting his ventures with his own money.
As his sketch-books and note-books show, he concerned himself with every aspect of the projects in which he was involved and his designs were the result of calculations and experiment.
Watch The Life of Isambard Kingdom Brunel video.
Brunel and his Times
1800 Maudslay's precision screw-cutting lathe 1802 Dalton states his Atomic Theory
1804 Beethoven's 'Eroica' 1805 Trafalgar
Brunel born 1806
1807 Fulton's steamboat on Hudson River
1811 Luddite riots 1812 Napoleon retreats from Moscow
1814 Stephenson builds the Blucher 1815 Waterloo
1817 Constable paints 'Flatford Mill'
Goes to France 1820
1820 Ampère's Laws of Electro-dynamic Action 1821 Faraday invents the electric motor
Enters father's office aged 16 1822
1823 Babbage begins his calculating machine
Engineer in charge of Thames Tunnel 1826
1825 Stockton and Darlington Railway opened
1827 Ohm's Law stated
Wins second Clifton Bridge competition 1830
1829 Stephenson's Rocket wins Rainhill Trials
Construction begins 1831
1832 First Reform Bill
Bristol Dock works and GWR route survey 1833
1833 First Factory Act 1834 Tolpuddle Martyrs
Marriage to Mary Horsley 1836 'Great Western' launched 1837
1837 Queen Victoria succeeds to throne
1839 'People's Charter' 1840 Joule begins work on heat
Line from London to Bristol opened 1841 Thames Tunnel opened and 'Great Britain ' launched 1843
1842 Mayer's Law of Conservation of Energy
1845 Cayley's Theory of Linear Transformations and McNaught's compound steam engine
Saltash Bridge commenced 1848
1848 'Year of Revolutions' 1849 'David Copperfield'
1851 The Great Exhibition
Chepstow Bridge opened 1852
Prefabricated hospital for Crimea 1855
1854-5 Crimean War 1855 Lawrence's turret lathe 1856 Bessemer's steel-making process
'Great Eastern' launched 1858
Saltash Bridge opened 1859 Brunel dies 1859
1859 'Origin of Species' and 'A Tale of Two Cities'
