Britain’s Greatest ever Engineer?
Brian Portch gave a very knowledgeable account of the life and works of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He gave details of Brunel’s family background, including the fact that his father and one son were also very successful engineers, his father having been knighted for his efforts.
Isambard was born in Portsmouth in 1806 and was fluent in French and an excellent artist at a very young age. His father trained him for stardom, designing formal education in engineering for him in London and Paris and apprenticing him to a master horologist and tool maker.
Isambard’s big break came in 1831 when his design for Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol was selected by the judges who included another famous bridge builder, Thomas Telford. We are fortunate in the West Country to be able to see a great deal of Brunel’s work. In 1833 he won, by one vote, a competition to build a railway from Bristol to London. He told the committee that his design would not be the cheapest but it would be the best. Work started at either end, using the flattest route and a 7ft ¼ in. gauge to provide comfort, stability and speed. When the two lines met the discrepancy was only 4cm!
Brunel’s Temple Meads in Bristol is the oldest surviving terminus building in the world. Moving west, Brunel, probably due to the need to serve the fashionable Victorian resorts, chose a route via the coastal towns of Dawlish and Teignmouth, rather than tunnel through Haldon Hill, a feature challenging today’s engineers!
Another local example of his genius is the atmospheric railway – broad gauge with a pipe in the middle – which worked on pneumatic pressure. Like the cashier's system still popular today in some shops, this worked well but the materials did not stand up to weather and seawater etc. The Pumping Station at Starcross is the main survivor.
Of course, Brunel also designed the viaduct at Ivybridge and the Royal Albert Bridge over the Tamar. Paddington Station, with its magnificent iron and glass roof, opened in 1854 and another triumph was the great steamship SS Great Britain, now on show in Bristol. The SS Great Eastern was something of a white elephant as it couldn’t get through the Suez Canal – but its mast survives outside Anfield football ground in Liverpool!
What amazing achievements in such a short life - Brunel died in London in 1859.