Brunel, Isambard Kingdom

Brunel, Isambard Kingdom (1806–59). One of the most distinguished and imaginative engineers of C19, Brunel was born in Portsmouth, Hants., son of the French-born engineer Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (1769–1849). Educated privately and at the Lycée Henri Quatre in Paris, in 1823 he entered his father's office where he was involved in the construction of the Thames Tunnel from Wapping to Rotherhithe. In 1829 he designed the suspension-bridge over the Avon at Clifton, and an amended conception of 1831 was begun in 1836, completed in 1864 after modification. He was appointed engineer for the Great Western Railway in 1833: he not only surveyed the route, but designed the Box Tunnel between Chippenham and Bath, the bridge over the Thames at Maidenhead, and introduced a limited type of standardization for the designs of station-buildings on the line between London and Bristol. He was responsible for Temple Meads Station, Bristol (1839–40), and Paddington Terminus, London (1850–5—to which M. D. Wyatt and Owen Jones contributed), as well as the Royal Albert Bridge over the Tamar at Saltash (1857–9), his most celebrated iron structure. He designed the Railway Company's town at Swindon, Wilts. (again with Wyatt); the Monkwearmouth Docks (1831), and later similar works at Plymouth and Milford Haven; a prefabricated hospital (complete with tarred wooden sewers and mechanical ventilation, for Renkioi in the Crimea (1855), possibly suggested by the success of the Crystal Palace, for he was a zealous promoter of the Great Exhibition of 1851); and ocean-going steamships (e.g. the Great Eastern (1858)) that were larger and more technically advanced than any previously known.

Bibliography

Binding (1997);
R. A. Buchanan (2002);
Falconer (1995);
Kentley et al. (eds.) (2000);
Noble (1938);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
Pugsley (ed.) (1980);
Rolt (1957);
Skempton et al. (eds.) (2002)