Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Early life

Family

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born on 9 April 1806 in Britain Street, Portsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire. He was the third child of his parents, and only son; his elder sisters were named Sophia and Emma and born in 1801 and 1804 respectively. At the time of his birth, his father was working on various projects for the Royal Navy in the area, including block-making machinery which employed the world's first production line. He was named Isambard after his father, the French-British civil engineer Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, and Kingdom after the English family of his mother, Sophia Kingdom; both of his parents had links to Normandy, where the Brunel name had been recorded since the 1400s. Dr Steven Brindle calls Marc Brunel "the most remarkable and able inventor living in Britain at that date".

Sophia, Brunel's mother, was an orphan for most of her childhood; her father, the naval contractor William Kingdom, died when she was young. Brunel's father, Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, was born in France, but spent much of his childhood in England before returning in 1792. After making a royalist speech denouncing Maximilien Robespierre in January 1793, he was forced into hiding with a royalist family, where he met Sophia; the pair quickly fell in love and were engaged. Leaving for New York in September 1793, Marc spent 5–6 years in the United States finding work; in October 1793, Sophia was imprisoned in a convent for her royalist links and was only released upon Robespierre's fall in August 1794. The couple were reunited on 16 March 1799 and married on 1 November.

Shortly after Brunel's birth, the family moved to 4 Lindsey Row in Chelsea, London, which had been converted from Lindsey House. Marc Brunel devised many business ventures, such as making boots for the British Army in February 1809, which was successful until the government cancelled an order and refused to pay, leaving him with significant losses. Furthermore, the sawmill he had founded burnt down in August 1814, and he was unable to raise funds for its reconstruction.

On 14 May 1821, his father, who had accumulated debts of over £5,000 (equivalent to £475,000 in 2025), was sent to King's Bench Prison, a debtors' prison. Not wanting to abandon her husband, Sophia went with him. After three months went by with no prospect of release, Marc Brunel made public that he was considering working under Alexander I of Russia, which caused Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, to warn the Chancellor they could not lose such an engineer. In response, the Chancellor relented and issued Marc the £5,000 to clear his debts, in exchange for his promise to remain in Britain; the couple were released in August 1821. Dr Steven Brindle makes the comparison in this respect between Brunel and Charles Dickens: both were of a similar age; both were from Portsmouth; both had fathers sent to debtor's prisons; and both spent their early adulthood in London.

Education

In spite of his family's tumultuous finances, Brunel had a happy childhood, with his father acting as his first teacher. His father taught him drawing and observational techniques from the age of four, and Brunel had learned Euclidean geometry by eight. During this time, he learned to speak French fluently and the basic principles of engineering. He was encouraged to draw interesting buildings and identify any faults in their structure, and like his father, he demonstrated an aptitude for mathematics and mechanics.

When Brunel was eight, he was sent to a school run by a local Reverend Weeden Butler. He was then sent to Dr Morrell's boarding school in Hove, where he studied classics. His father was determined that Brunel should have access to the high-quality education he had enjoyed in his youth in France. Accordingly, at the age of 14, the younger Brunel was enrolled at the Henri Quatre (Henry IV) College in Caen, where he remained for two years. During his time at the school, he was seen to be interested in helping his father with his work and was very proficient in calculations. Nevertheless, he was also fond of artistic drawings in addition to engineering-based ones. He then went to Lycée Henri-IV in Paris, which was known for its mathematics education. While abroad, he was easily sheltered from his parents' imprisonment, but having been imprisoned for his debts, it is impossible that Marc Brunel could have paid for his son's education; the benefactor who did remains unknown.

When Brunel completed his studies at Lycée Henri-IV in 1822, his father had him presented as a candidate at the renowned engineering school École Polytechnique, but as a foreigner, he was deemed ineligible for entry. At the time, there were no university degrees in the United Kingdom in engineering or mechanics, and so Brunel decided to stay in Paris and study under the prominent master clockmaker and horologist Abraham-Louis Breguet, because horology was the finest type of engineering. Breguet praised Brunel's potential in letters to his father; in August 1822, having completed his apprenticeship, Brunel returned to England.

Early career

1823–1824: First projects

Brunel continued his engineering education in England by becoming an assistant to his father from 1823, which allowed him to work on significant engineering projects. During this time, he helped his father with building the bridges on the French island of Réunion (then the Île Bourbon), a design for a potential Panama Canal, the concept of a floating pier for the Port of Liverpool, and working with Augustus Charles Pugin to design Kensal Green Cemetery. While during this time Brunel's career was calm and stable, he also became impatient that he was not yet prominent and successful.

In spring 1823, Brunel's father came up with an idea for a so-called Gaz Engine [sic] which was an alternate design to the steam engine. The idea was based on an experiment by Michael Faraday in which gases such as carbon dioxide could be liquefied under high pressure and, upon being heated, they would boil and massively expand in volume, hence producing the force to drive the engine. The benefit of this in comparison to the steam engine was that there was no smoke released, making it more pleasant to run, and that it would supposedly be significantly more efficient.

Brunel and his father then tried to produce this Gaz Engine at a huge cost, yet Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot's work on thermodynamics at around the same time would prove such an engine impossible. However, this work was not yet understood in the United Kingdom, and so Brunel and his father continued to work on it in vain, receiving funding from the Admiralty and Faraday himself. By January 1833, he had finally abandoned his ideas of the Gaz engine, having spent £15,000 on the project, equivalent to £1,410,000 in 2025. He wrote in his diary that "All the time and expense both enormous devoted to this thing for nearly ten years are therefore wasted".

1824–1828: Thames Tunnel

Brunel's chance to become a prominent engineer arose in July 1824, when his father was appointed as the engineer of a project to build a tunnel under the river Thames. Described by Annabel Gillings as the "most ambitious engineering project of the time", and hailed as an extreme feat in science and engineering, it was designed to alleviate the pressure on London's ferries and on its bridges, of which there were none near the London Docks. The biggest challenge was the softness of the soil below the river: a tunnel between Rotherhithe and Limehouse had been proposed by Robert Vazie in 1802, but after it collapsed inwards twice due to quicksand, the project was abandoned. The composition of the riverbed by Rotherhithe was itself little more than waterlogged sediment and loose gravel.

Marc Brunel's idea for overcoming these challenges came from the shipworm family of molluscs: their hard shell grinds and softens the wood in front of them, which they then eat and, using their faeces to fill in their own path and thus prevent the wood from collapsing. This inspired his tunnelling shield, which he patented on 20 January 1818, wherein twelve workers mined from within a huge cast-iron shield and the spoil was converted to bricks behind them to form the tunnel walls. Only one person would mine at a time, and that person would only uncover, mine, and recover one of their sections at once; the shield was moved forward once this had been done for all thirty-six sections. On 19 February 1824, one day after Marc Brunel met with the Institution of Civil Engineers, the formation of the Thames Tunnel Company was announced.

The plan for the Thames Tunnel involved digging two separate bores as a dual carriageway, and to construct it very close to the riverbed to avoid the dangerous quicksand beneath. The project ceremonially began on 2 March 1825, and Brunel laid the second brick, after his father. Brunel was given the job of assistant to John Armstrong, the resident engineer of the project, a role Brunel had hoped to have himself. Due to early setbacks, the company pressured for the tunnelling to happen faster, and so the construction became more dangerous. The sewage in the Thames polluted and poisoned the workers below, and yet Brunel and his father helped to work the tunnelling shield.

In April 1826, when John Armstrong resigned due to illness, Brunel took over as resident engineer; his father then stepped down from leading the project after contracting pleurisy, with Brunel taking full charge of the engineering from 3 January 1827. At one critical point in September 1826, he refused to leave the tunnel for a total of 96 hours, which he spent working with occasional breaks to sleep. As a token of respect for the toil of the workers and their trying conditions, he moved to a cabin inside the tunnel with one of his assistants, spending his time monitoring the progress and quality of construction and ensuring the workers' discipline.

1829–1833: The Clifton Suspension Bridge

Brunel is perhaps best remembered for designs for the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, whose construction began in 1831. A competition had been announced in 1829 to design a bridge over the Avon Gorge near Bristol; at the time, crossing the gorge involved descending 250 feet (76 m) to the water, getting a ferry across, and reascending the same height, or by dangerously being sent in a basket on a zip line between the two sides. While Brunel had never designed a suspension bridge, his father helped him, and he produced four designs based on different sites for the bridge, with spans ranging from 870 feet (270 m) to the longest ever proposed at the time, at 916 feet (279 m).

Thomas Telford, the then-president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, was invited to judge the entries. The effect of the wind on his own Menai Suspension Bridge made him think Brunel's designs were too long, and he advised against them. Instead, he proposed two intermediate towers at the bottom of the gorge, splitting up the bridge. Brunel argued back that his calculations were correct and that Telford's proposed towers would sink into the ground. By 1830 it became clear that the necessary money for Telford's design could never be raised, and the competition was thus reopened.

Once again, Brunel and Telford both submitted to the second competition, with Telford simply resubmitting the same design. Brunel adapted his design to make it more favourable to the judge, Davies Gilbert, by shortening the span to 630 feet (190 m). Brunel's design was adorned with Egyptian designs, such as sphinxes and hieroglyphs, with large panels detailing the bridge's construction. Both Brunel and Telford lost to W Hawks, with Telford not even selected as a finalist; Brunel travelled to Bristol to confront Gilbert over his decision and persuaded him to change the winner. On 27 March 1831, Brunel wrote to his brother-in-law, the politician Benjamin Hawes:

Of all the wonderful feats I have performed, since I have been in this part of the world, I think yesterday I performed the most wonderful. I produced unanimity among 15 men who were all quarrelling about that most ticklish subject—taste.

On 21 July 1831, there was an opening ceremony for the construction of the bridge. However, it was quickly plagued by issues; building the approach on one side became challenging, and there was not enough money to complete the bridge. On 22 September 1831, the Reform Act passed the House of Commons, the lower elected chamber of Parliament. The bill promised radical parliamentary reform in the United Kingdom, and the House of Lords, the upper chamber whose interests the bill served against, blocked it. This led to riots that spread across the entire country, but those in Bristol were the heaviest. Brunel himself was sworn in as a "Special Constable" to help control the riots, and he hurriedly took items from Mansion House to stop them from being looted. The riots resulted in the construction of the bridge being cancelled entirely.

Railway career

1833–1835: Beginnings of the Great Western Railway

In Autumn 1832, the first plan for a line between London and Bristol was conceived by four men in the latter city. The idea followed from the success of the LMR and the planned London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR), and picked up the support of local groups such as the Society of Merchant Venturers. While the Clifton Suspension Bridge remained incomplete during Brunel's lifetime, it had given him the opportunity to become known by the people of Bristol. When, therefore, a company was formed to build a railway to London, Brunel was floated as a possible engineer. After it was suggested that the role of Engineer would go to the person who designed the line of lowest cost, Brunel wrote to say "You are simply giving a premium to the man who makes the most flattering promises. The route I will survey will not be the cheapest – but it will be the best".

While the company did appoint Brunel as engineer in March 1833, they had him share the role with William Townsend, whose only experience was on Bristol tramways, and with whom Brunel had no interest in working. Brunel and Townsend were given ten weeks to travel the route on horseback, taking measurements and convincing landowners to sell to the company. many of whom were starkly opposed to the railway. The railway was publicised on 30 July 1833 at 116 miles (187 km), the longest ever proposed at that time. Brunel felt only one of the directors, Charles Saunders, was enthusiastic enough, and the pair became friends. The directors agreed that Brunel would be the line's engineer and confirmed the name—the Great Western Railway (GWR). He hired a team of assistants and made a mobile office out of a Britzka which contained a bed and his equipment; it soon became known as the "Flying Hearse".

On 7 September 1833, the company commissioned Brunel to complete a second, more detailed survey, and finalise the purchase of necessary land. The cost of Brunel's route was £3,000,000 (equivalent to £309,000,000 in 2025), half of which had to be raised to propose the bill in Parliament. Brunel chose to route the railway north of the Marlborough Downs, which he chose for its preferential landscape and potential connections to Oxford and Gloucester, but it faced criticism for avoiding major towns. Once it became clear the necessary funds could not be raised within the parliament, the GWR decided to only propose the London–Reading and Bath–Bristol sections, postponing the rest of the line. The bill was submitted to Parliament in November 1833, and Brunel was called as a witness for eleven of the forty-two days of discussion. According to his biographer Annabel Gillings, he "flourished" under the pressure, making the hearing "a show [of which] he was the star". Nevertheless, the extent of opposition from landowners, settlements, and rival railway companies made the bill nonviable, and the House of Lords struck it down on 25 July 1834.

1836–1841: Construction of the main line

By the end of 1837, the pressure of building the railway was beginning to affect Brunel. The GWR had made public in August 1837 their plans to open the line by November, which did not materialise. Brunel believed the next deadline set of 30 May 1838 to be impossible as well, but he was in fact wrong, and a private ceremony of the directors and others was held on 31 May 1838, in which the first train, the North Star, ran on the line between Paddington and Maidenhead. However, upon the genuine opening of the section of line on 4 June, problems quickly arose: the locomotives were not of good quality; Brunel's track design was uncomfortable; and the rails quickly shifted under the weight of trains because of Brunel's use of sand instead of stone for ballast. The directors concluded that the broad gauge was actually no worse than standard gauge railways of the time, but was not better as Brunel had promised.

If ever I go mad, I shall have the ghost of the opening of the railway walking before me, or rather standing in front of me, holding out its hand, and when it steps forward, a little swarm of devils in the shape of leaky pickle-tanks, uncut timber, half-finished station houses, sinking embankments, broken screws, absent guard plates, unfinished drawings and sketches, will, quietly and quite as a matter of course and as if I ought to have expected it, lift up my ghost and put him a little further off than before.

Under pressure from the GWR board to work out how to improve the track, a report was given by John Hawkshaw, whose poor research led him to believe the problem was that the locomotives were too powerful for the track. A second report by Nicholas Wood, with the help of Dionysius Lardner, concluded the issue was the number of piles and that broad-gauge trains led to too much drag. The GWR, in response to the reports, decided Brunel needed to work alongside another engineer to prevent further shortfalls; Brunel said he would rather resign, and would prove his worth by completing the line. Firstly, Brunel modified the design of the North Star to improve its speed, after which it could go 38 miles per hour (61 km/h), which was physically faster than Lardner's calculation for Wood's report would allow, and Brunel was kept, alone, as Engineer by a vote of the shareholders, along with his choice of gauge. Brunel believed that the expansion of the GWR would cause other lines to conform to what he saw as the superior gauge.

One of the most notable structures on the line was the Maidenhead Railway Bridge, the flattest-arched bridge ever built at the time of its completion, a record Brunel insisted on to keep the continuous 1 in 1320 (0.8‰) gradient. The design of the bridge was deemed impossible by some, and after the supports were withdrawn prematurely by the bridge's builders, it began to sag. After it had been repaired, Brunel left the supports in situ, but not actually holding the bridge, to allow his critics to revel in his supposed failure. These supports were then destroyed by storm, revealing the functional bridge behind, which Dr Steven Brindle described as a "heroic affair". The bridge is still functional today despite trains being up to ten times heavier.

1842–1846: Railway Mania and the Gauge War

By the 1840s, the United Kingdom was in Railway Mania—Parliament passed 650 railway acts between 1845 and 1848, and engineers and railway companies were desperate to find alternatives to steam engines. One consequence of this was that railways were beginning to branch out, with Britain covered in small lines. As these lines began to link up, a problem arose for the GWR, whose broad gauge was incompatible with most other railways' narrower gauge. Brunel's broad gauge railway was simply faster—the first London to Exeter train covered 194 miles (312 km) in 4+2⁄3 hours, making the GWR's services the fastest in the world at the time. However, it was simply outcompeted by Stephenson's gauge, which had spread across the country. Brunel's influence let the broad gauge spread in the West and Wales, such as the South Wales Railway, of which he became Chief Engineer in 1844. Once these railways then spread northwards and eastwards, locations such as Gloucester and Swindon became served by railways with different, incompatible gauges, and goods trains would wait for hours as their cargo was transferred between different-gauged wagons.

In July 1845, a royal commission was created to research the optimum gauge for the country, a conflict which had become known as the "Gauge War". The commission began its hearing on 6 August 1845, and Brunel was called to give evidence from 25 October, answering two-hundred questions. Brunel's argument was twofold: firstly, no single gauge was needed because such a war created beneficial competition between companies; and secondly, that the broad gauge was, as Brunel had always claimed, a better choice of engineering, because it allowed for faster and more comfortable services. Brunel naively suggested a race between the two gauges' locomotives, even though the newest broad-gauge locomotive was three years of age compared to many newly built narrower-gauge locomotives. Engine A, representing the narrower of the gauges, ran the 44-mile (71 km) Darlington–York section of line, whereas Ixion, a Firefly class representing the broader of the gauges, ran the 53-mile (85 km) Paddington–Didcot section of line. Despite its older age, Ixion kept an average speed of 53 miles per hour (85 km/h); when Engine A reached this speed on its run, it derailed.

In spite of the evidence Brunel sought to demonstrate, their report, published in 1846, was in favour of the narrower gauge to become the new 'standard gauge'. The commission argued the most important factor was having only one gauge in the country, and the hassle of converting the narrower gauge to the broader gauge was too significant. Brunel refused to accept defeat and lobbied Parliament with his own fifty-page report on why the commission was wrong to decide against him, and while the decision was not reversed, Parliament permitted Brunel and the GWR to continue building in his gauge. His adamance of broader gauges' superiority eventually became irrelevant in the face of its financial inferiority; the GWR would eventually convert their broad gauge track to the new standard gauge, starting in the 1860s after Brunel's death and finishing on 21 May 1892, when remaining stock was consigned to temporary yards at Swindon awaiting dismantling. William Stanier ordered historical locomotives to be scrapped too, such as North Star. In the modern day, some high-speed railways have reverted to broader gauges, such as the Japanese Shinkansen.

1847–1848: The atmospheric railway

It was in the context of the Railway Mania that Brunel chose to build his atmospheric railway. In September 1844, Brunel had travelled with Gooch to Dún Laoghaire to visit their so-called 'atmospheric railway'. Invented by Samuel Clegg as an adaptation of a similar system for moving post, each train had no engine and was instead connected to a pipe. Air was pushed through the pipe by huge pumps at each end of the line, which contained the steam engines. One direction of the line was uphill, using the pump system; the other was downhill and gravity-based. At the same time, the South Devon Railway (SDR) was building a line between Exeter and Penzance; this line was an independent company but would carry through trains from the GWR. Brunel realised that he could use this atmospheric system on the SDR, in part because it allowed him to pursue a more direct route with steeper inclines than otherwise, and he planned to build a test section as far as Teignmouth. The atmospheric railway had many flaws—the driver had little control of the train, which could lead to deadly accidents, and keeping the pipes airtight over long distances was difficult. Both Brunel and William Cubitt believed in applying the concept to the British railways; George and Robert Stephenson thought it too impractical, as did Gooch. However, Brunel envisaged a 'green railway', in which passengers would not be bombarded with steam and ash, making the experience cleaner, quieter, and faster. The piping was so expensive that Brunel had to reduce the line to a single-track, and it opened to Teignmouth after delays on 13 September 1847. The line was built with pumping stations at 2-mile (3.2 km) intervals, designed with distinctive square chimneys; engine houses were also built further towards Plymouth and on the Torquay branch (now the Riviera line). There were eight pumping houses in total on the route, and a ninth at Torquay to serve a branch which never saw atmospheric traction. 15 in (380 mm) pipes were used on the level portions, and 22-inch (559 mm) pipes were intended for the steeper gradients.

The line had reached Newton Abbot by 10 January 1848, with trains able to run at approximately 68 miles per hour (109 km/h). Nevertheless, Brunel was proven wrong—the valve connecting the train to the pipe leaked constantly, and the pipe both froze solid in winter and was eaten by rats. Yet it was the deterioration of the valve—due to the reaction of tannin with iron oxide—that was the last straw that failed the project, as the continuous valve began to tear from its rivets over most of its length, and the estimated replacement cost of £25,000 (equivalent to £2,573,000 in 2025) was considered prohibitive. The railway closed for conversion back to a normal railway on 10 September 1848, having operated for less than a year, and Cubitt's line in London had closed the previous year equally as unsuccessful.

1849–1859: The Royal Albert Bridge

The SDR extended from Devon into Cornwall, which involved crossing the River Tamar. William Moorsom was originally contracted to engineer the line, and suggested a train ferry over the Hamoaze; he was replaced by Brunel when Parliament rejected this idea. Brunel chose to cross the river at Saltash as the river there is only 1,100 feet (340 m) wide, and proposed the railway cross on what would one day become the Royal Albert Bridge. Brunel wanted to build a timber-span bridge with six piers at a height of 70 feet (21 m), but this was rejected by the Admiralty who needed to use the river for ships, and so he redesigned the bridge as having one pier in the centre of the river and one 465-foot (142 m) span either side to the riverbank, at a height of 100 feet (30 m).

The greatest challenge was surveying the riverbed as the river was 70 feet (21 m) in depth and too murky for divers to see anything; Brunel used a caisson to drain sections of water in 35 different places and map the rock formations. He then used the Chepstow Railway Bridge as a test as it had a similar design; safety was a major issue as the construction work was in the aftermath of the Dee Bridge disaster. Brunel's design for the bridge, taking into account the shortfalls of the Dee Bridge, was based on placing wrought iron trusses above the railway which, when compressed together, would naturally hold the railway in place below. In what his biographer Annabel Gillings calls an "incredibly ingenious design", Brunel made the bridge self-supporting rather than relying on its weight being held by structures on either end.

The industry had not recovered from the stock market crash of 1847 even by April 1852, when Brunel reduced the bridge to a single-track design in order to allow construction to begin. Not willing to risk failure once again, Brunel built a substantial caisson rather than the normal cofferdam in the river to build the pier, ensuring that the underwater work was successful. Brunel designed a pressurised caisson to withstand the water from outside, one of its first uses in Great Britain. The bridge was also mostly prefabricated—the caisson and trusses were all built on land and then lowered and lifted into place respectively. The construction of the bridge attracted great local attention, with as many as 300,000 people at once. On 2 May 1859, Prince Albert opened the bridge, but Brunel was not present as he was too ill; services finally commenced on 4 May 1859. After Brunel's poor outlook in 1847, four of his five major projects having failed or halted, the Royal Albert Bridge served as one of his most famous successes.

Other railway ventures

Brunel's other notable railway infrastructure includes the Windsor Railway Bridge, the seawall of the Exeter–Plymouth line, and the original Chepstow Railway Bridge. The Engineer wrote that the bridges were the most imposing part of Brunel's railways, and that his methods, though often criticised, were cutting-edge in their advancement of bridge-building techniques. Throughout his railway building career, but particularly on the South Devon and Cornwall Railways where economy was needed and there were many valleys to cross, Brunel made extensive use of wood for the construction of substantial viaducts; these have had to be replaced over the years as their primary material, Kyanised Baltic Pine, became uneconomical to obtain.

In 1832, Brunel was commissioned by the Bristol Dock Company to rebuild the locks on the entrance to their new floating harbour. The River Avon, whose tidality had impaired the function of Bristol as a port, was dammed and diverted, and the level of the docks was instead controlled by a series of locks. In 1842, Brunel began extending the width of the south lock, which is now eponymous to him and Grade II* listed; he used a single-panel gate design, which meant a new bridge needed to be built to allow people to cross into and out of the harbour. His design, the Brunel Swivel Bridge, was completed in 1850. In 1873, it was moved to its current position by the northern lock, and it was made Grade II* listed in 1972. It is included on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register.

The 70 miles (110 km) of the Cornwall Railway between Plymouth and Truro crossed 45 rivers and deep valleys. Brunel spanned 42 of these with partly- or entirely-timber viaducts of various types. Workshops were established at Lostwithiel, with excess timber being used for the station buildings. The original viaducts are dated 1859, the year the railway opened, but many still on active railway have had their timber frames partially or entirely replaced. Between Saltash and St Germans, a deviation line was built in 1908, eliminating the wooden viaducts on the bypassed section of line. Those on the Falmouth branch were all replaced between 1923 and 1934. These timber viaducts allowed Brunel to build his broad gauge lines across challenging terrain at low cost, allowing him to expand them in vain of the increasingly-futile choice of gauge.

On 21 December 1850, Brunel was tasked by the GWR to rebuild London Paddington, which was quickly becoming too small for its traffic. He presented his preliminary design on 2 January 1851, and unusually for him, he was happy to work with other architects and engineers on the project, including Matthew Digby Wyatt. His relocated Paddington had a 700-foot-long (210 m) trainshed with ten platforms. While the first train departed on 16 January 1854, the project did not see completion until 1855. Alongside the new station building, new depots and offices were built, alongside the Great Western Royal Hotel, opened by Prince Albert on 8 June 1854.

Shipping career

1835–1842: Origins and the Great Western

Brunel's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography describes his maritime career as the source of his "greatest fame". When asked about the necessity of the Great Western Main Line's length in an 1835 meeting of the GWR's directors, Brunel replied: "Why not make it longer, and have a steamboat to go from Bristol to New York and call it the Great Western?" While originally a witty remark met with dissatisfaction, the board had agreed by October of that year, and the Great Western Steamship Company (GWSC) was formed. It was Brunel's vision that passengers would be able to purchase one ticket at London Paddington and travel from London to New York, changing from the Great Western Railway to the Great Western steamship at the former's terminus in Neyland, West Wales.

Technological developments in the early 1830s had made longer journeys possible, but it was generally thought that a ship would not be able to carry enough fuel for the trip and have room for commercial cargo. However, general technological advancements at the time were yet to be consolidated within the shipping industry, partially because it was still structured from a very craftsmanship-based perspective, and advances in the industry primarily being sailpower-related. At the time, steamboats were only used for shorter journeys, and Dionysus Lardner once again opposed Brunel by suggesting that a transatlantic steamboat would be mathematically impossible, quipping that anyone seeking to have a steamboat go from Liverpool to New York "might as well talk of making a voyage from New York or Liverpool to the moon".

Brunel, however, disproved Lardner; Brunel showed the amount a ship could carry increased as the cube of its dimensions, whereas the amount of resistance a ship experienced from the water as it travelled increased by only a square of its dimensions. His calculations thus demonstrated a bigger ship would be smoother, faster, and more fuel-efficient than a smaller equivalent. Brunel's design for the boat made it, at the time, the largest in the world, with a 236-foot (72 m) hull, 250-foot (76 m) keel, and displacement of 2,300 tonnes (2,300 long tons; 2,500 short tons). This gave it around twice the size and power of the next-largest ship at the time, with an output of approximately 450 horsepower (340 kW). The ship was constructed at Wapping Wharf in Bristol Harbour, beginning with the hull in 1835–1836; a March 1836 prospectus costed the ship at £35,000, equivalent to £3,500,000 in 2025.

Great Western was constructed mainly from wood, but Brunel added bolts and iron diagonal reinforcements to maintain the keel's strength. In addition to its steam-powered paddle wheels, the ship carried four masts for sails. She was launched without her steam engine on 19 July, and sailed by wind power to London from 18 August to receive them. In early trials, she was able to maintain speeds of 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph). The British and American Steam Navigation Company, hoping to beat the GWSC, used their much smaller ship SS Sirius in order to attempt to win the race to New York. Sirius left on 28 March 1838 with twenty-two passengers, and the Great Western left later on 31 March. However, after two hours at sea, there was a fire on the ship, during which Brunel fell 20 feet (6.1 m) from a ladder while descending it, breaking his leg and dislocating his shoulder.

1842–1852: The Great Britain

The service of the Great Western was commercially successful enough for a second ship to be required, which Brunel was asked to design. Originally, the Great Western Steamship Company wanted to build a sister ship for the Great Western, but Brunel preferred to build a better successor. In October 1838, Brunel saw the SS Rainbow in Bristol, which had been built with an iron hull, and had the idea to transpose this to his transatlantic steamships. At 3,444 tonnes (3,390 long tons; 3,796 short tons), Brunel's design was around seven times larger than other iron-hull boats of the time, and would be physically too large to fit in Bristol Harbour, so a dry dock had to be constructed alongside it. Despite others' reservations towards using an iron hull, Brunel realised only it could be used to expand the ship as much as he wished.

Construction on the ship began on 18 July 1839 in Wapping Wharf; at the time, she was nicknamed Mammoth. In May 1840, Brunel was inspired once again when he saw the SS Archimedes; the boat used the newer propeller, but was only 200 tonnes (200 long tons; 220 short tons), 17 times smaller than Brunel's plans. Brunel stopped work on the new ship and hired Archimedes for further testing, in order to ascertain whether the propeller or more conventional paddle wheel was better. In December 1840, he ordered the effective reconstruction of the ship to include the—in his opinion, preferential—propeller engine, and making Great Britain the largest ship to do so at the time.

Brunel's design for the propeller-driven ship gave it a brake horsepower of 1,600 bhp (1,200 kW), compared to the 450 bhp (340 kW) of the Great Western, and incorporated a large six-bladed propeller; the total length was 322 feet (98 m). Owing to her design, Great Britain is considered the first modern ship, being built of metal rather than wood, powered by an engine rather than wind or oars, and driven by a propeller rather than a paddle wheel. At the time of her creation, the Great Britain was more than twice the weight of the Great Western, and the largest in the world. Brunel's experiments with propellers caught the attention of the Navy, who asked him for help applying the technology to battleships; Brunel had historically tried to avoid any form of government or bureaucracy but relented as he realised it could be to his benefit. At first the Navy wished to use the technology on HMS Acheron, but Brunel convinced them otherwise, and instead they chose HMS Rattler. Brunel fitted her with a propeller and the appropriate engines in 1842, and the project was a success, with all new Navy ships utilising the propeller from 1845. In the end, Brunel received no pay nor credit for his work.

1852–1859: The Great Eastern

In 1852 Brunel turned to a third ship, larger than her predecessors, intended for voyages to India and Australia. The Great Eastern was cutting-edge technology for her time; Brunel's final design for the ship had a length of 700 ft (210 m), a width of 120 ft (37 m), and a displacement of 22,500 tonnes (22,100 long tons; 24,800 short tons). The overall capacity of the ship was over 4,000; this was able to be so large because Brunel used new designs, such as skylights, to place passenger cabins deep within the ship, whereas before they had to be close to the deck. Great Eastern was designed to cruise non-stop from London to Sydney and back, since engineers of the time mistakenly believed that Australia had no coal reserves. In July 1852, Brunel was appointed engineer to the Eastern Steam Navigation Company (ESNC), who wanted a ship that would allow them to be successful in the Far East market. Like many of Brunel's ambitious projects, the ship soon ran over budget and behind schedule in the face of a series of technical problems.

Due to the size of the ship, the ESNC had to raise £800,000 in order to fund its construction, equivalent to £96,600,000 in 2025. This had been completed by 1853, largely due to the contributions of Charles Geach, Morton Peto, and Thomas Brassey. However, there was an almost immediate setback when the main London shipyard owned by John Scott Russell, the main contractor, burnt down on 10 September 1853. This meant that Brunel was reliant on Geach to provide the materials for the ship, and that the ship would be built at Napier Yard, which was also owned by Scott Russell, instead. Construction began in spring 1854, and she was built parallel to the River Thames in order to be launched sideways into the river, as otherwise she would run aground while trying to enter.

Brunel's construction of the ship came with a number of innovations. Firstly, each of the parts used would be built to a standard specification no matter where they fit into the ship; secondly, the ship would be built with two concentric hulls connected by hexagonal braces, creating a weightless void in between while strengthening the ship. Over two thousand workers constructed the ship by hand, including moving the various components into place. Due to financial pressures, Scott Russell was forced to mortgage the dockyard but did not admit this to Brunel; this was the beginning of a strained relationship between the two, with Brunel accusing Scott Russell of trying to steal his fame and the credit for the design. A second fire in October 1855, which did not damage the ship directly, led to the two finally agreeing to delay the launching date. However, Brunel was still dissatisfied with Scott Russell's management style, in one letter writing to him:

Crimean War

In 1854 and 1855, during the Crimean War, Brunel presented the Admiralty with designs for floating gun batteries, which could be partially concealed in water, with the encouragement of John Fox Burgoyne. These were intended as siege weapons for attacking Russian ports, in particular Kronstadt. However, these proposals were not taken up, confirming Brunel's opinion of the Admiralty as being opposed to novel ideas.

Renkioi Hospital

Britain entered the Crimean War on 28 March 1854, and it quickly became apparent that not only were Britain's military tactics poor, but that their casualties were unnecessarily high, with five in every six deaths being from disease. Florence Nightingale was sent to Scutari, Turkey, where there were no proper hospitals, casualty transport system, or water supply; the British Army Hospital was hosted in an old barracks, where illnesses including cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and malaria ran rampant. Britain's failures in managing their wounded quickly became a national scandal after they were reported in The Times.

Benjamin Hawes, Brunel's brother-in-law (see § Personal life), wrote to him on 16 February 1855 to ask whether Brunel could build a mobile field hospital while implementing better hygiene standards. Hawes himself had been criticised by Nightingale for perceived inaction on the matter. At the time, he was working on the Great Eastern amongst other projects but accepted the task anyhow. Brunel presented his design to the War Office six days later, described by his biographer Annabel Gillings as "ingenious"—it featured 1000 beds, a ventilation system for hygiene, flushing toilets, and could be entirely built in England before being sent to the war zone for quick construction. The design even allowed for the temperature inside to be controlled.

In only five months, he and his team had designed, constructed, shipped, and assembled the pre-fabricated wood and canvas buildings, providing them with advice on transportation and positioning of the facilities. Brunel's field hospital was first assembled at Renkioi in the Dardanelles, and was assembled and ready for patients by 12 July 1855; it was full by 4 December. Of the approximately 1,300 patients treated in the hospital, there were only 50 deaths; this fatality rate of 4% at the hospital was less than a tenth of the fatality rate at the original hospital in Scutari. Nightingale referred to them as "those magnificent huts".

Personal life

In October 1827, Brunel began to write a personal diary, on top of the private diary and Thames Tunnel diary he already had, which he kept locked away to avoid intrusion. His personal diary is revealing of both a lack of self-confidence and self-satisfaction with the state of his career. He also discusses his thoughts for the future in great detail, stating that "indeed a bachelor life is luxurious", but that "on the other hand, in sickness or in disappointment how delightfull [sic] to have a companion whose sympathy one is sure of".

He was closely related to the Institution of Civil Engineers: he became an associate member in January 1829, a full member in 1837, was elected to its council in 1845, and was its Vice-President from 1850 until his death. On 10 June 1830, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Brunel's eldest sister Sophia married Benjamin Hawes, who would later serve in parliament as a Liberal politician; he and Brunel became close friends in spite of Brunel's disinterest in politics.

On 3 April 1843, while performing a conjuring trick for the amusement of his children, a half-sovereign coin which he had placed in his mouth became lodged in his windpipe. A special pair of forceps failed to remove it, as did a machine devised by Brunel to shake it loose. At the suggestion of his father, Brunel was strapped to a board and turned upside-down, and the coin was jerked free. He recuperated at Teignmouth, and his enjoyment of the area influenced his eventual choice of location for his country estate.

In the autumn of 1847, he purchased land in Watcombe in Devon, with the intent to build himself a country house; this would later become Brunel Manor. In comparison to the stress of his major engineering projects, working on the estate became what his brother-in-law John Horsley called his "chief delight". He commissioned William Burn to design the house and gardens; having a country home of this type had been a great dream of his youth. Brunel himself took great interest in the house and gardens and contributed to their designs, showing the closest attention to detail towards trees, whose growth and arrangement he would study to ensure the resulting estate was perfect. He died before the house or gardens were finished – only the foundations of the house had been completed by his death. Brunel did not leave his family enough money to finish the estate, and so they sold it off.

Marriage and issue

It was through Brunel's friendship with Benjamin Hawes that Brunel met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth Horsley, in summer 1832, whose family was accomplished in music and art; her father was composer and organist William Horsley, and her brother was John Callcott Horsley. John Horsley later praised Brunel's artistry, writing that he was "naturally imbued with artistic taste and perception of a very high order" and that he "had a remarkably accurate eye for proportion, as well as taste for form".

Isambard and Mary grew closer, and in May 1836, he proposed to her during a walk with her family on Holland Lane, London. The couple married on 5 July 1836 in St Mary Abbots, Kensington, before taking a honeymoon in North Wales and the West Country, and they established a home at 18 Duke Street, Westminster, overlooking St James' Park. The pair would live here until both of their deaths. Brunel's biographer Annabel Gillings comments that in contrast to Brunel's parents' intense, unfailing love, the partnership between Isambard and Mary was much more pragmatic and elegant. Isambard and Mary's children from their marriage were:

Isambard Brunel, born 18 May 1837. Born with unequal leg length, which Mary Kingdom Brunel refused to have corrected, he went on to become the chancellor of the Diocese of Ely.

Henry Marc Brunel, born in 1842. Henry went on to become an engineer himself, with his work including Tower Bridge.

Florence James née Brunel, born c. 1847. It was only through her marriage to Arthur James, a master at Eton College, that the family line was continued.

Death

Brunel was a heavy smoker, and Richard Bright diagnosed him with nephritis, to whose alternative name Bright's disease he was eponymous; this condition could lead to kidney failure if not treated, and Bright sent him to Egypt to recover there in the preferable climate, to which he left in December 1858 and returned in May 1859. By this point, he was ill enough that he could not stand, and in order to inspect the newly-completed Royal Albert Bridge he was taken across seated on a train. He also missed the banquet aboard the SS Great Eastern on 8 August as he was too ill to attend, but did inspect the ship on 5 September. It was during this inspection that the last photo of a by-then-frail Brunel was taken.Two hours later, Brunel suffered a stroke and was taken back to his home. On the evening of 8 September, he wrote his last letter, which asked for the GWR workers at Swindon Works to be given a day off to go and watch the SS Great Eastern. Four days later, on 9 September, he was informed of the accident on the Great Eastern and that it had killed five men. He did not survive long enough to hear the results of the inquest: at 10:30 pm on 15 September 1859, he died at his home in Duke Street, Westminster, aged 53. On 20 September, he was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, alongside his father; the pair had designed the cemetery together in the 1820s. Brunel left his family an inheritance of £89,000 (equivalent to £9,670,000 in 2025), a much more modest sum than his railway contemporaries. Many mourned Brunel's passing, in spite of and because of his business ventures; an obituary in The Morning Chronicle noted:Brunel was the right man for the nation, but unfortunately, he was not the right man for the shareholders. They must stoop who must gather gold, and Brunel could never stoop. The history of invention records no instance of grand novelties so boldly imagined and so successfully carried out by the same individual.

Legacy

In a public poll conducted by the BBC in 2002 to select the 100 Greatest Britons, Brunel was placed second, behind Winston Churchill. Brunel is celebrated by his biographers: Hereward Philip Spratt describes him in Nature as "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", and "one of the 19th-century engineering giants". In his book Isambard Kingdom Brunel, L. T. C. Rolt describes him as "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, [who] changed the face of the English landscape with his ground-breaking designs and ingenious constructions". His entry by Robert Harrison in the Dictionary of National Biography describes his character as "universally esteemed", and that "he was a profound student of engineering science, and possessed, besides big mathematical knowledge and readiness in applying it, great natural mechanical skill". Annabel Gillings writes that Brunel "would become almost synonymous with engineering" and that "he was perhaps the most eminent Victorian engineer", claiming that "his work altered the lives of almost every person in Britain, and millions abroad". Dr Steven Brindle calls him "one of the most inspiring and compelling figures of the nineteenth century" and the "quintessence of the inventive, creative, and pioneering spirit of Victorian Britain".

Brunel's life and works have been depicted in numerous books, films and television programs. The 2003 book and BBC TV series Seven Wonders of the Industrial World included a dramatisation of the building of the Great Eastern. Brunel was the subject of Great, a 1975 animated film directed by Bob Godfrey. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 48th Academy Awards in March 1976. At the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, Brunel was portrayed by Kenneth Branagh in a segment showing the Industrial Revolution. Brunel is a central character in Howard Rodman's novel The Great Eastern, published in 2019 by Melville House Publishing. A fictionalised version of Brunel is a key figure in the construction of Even Greater London in the alternate-history comedy podcast Victoriocity.

Memorials

A celebrated engineer in his era, Brunel remains revered today, as evidenced by numerous monuments to him. In London, there is a statue of Brunel on the Victoria Embankment, and further statues at Brunel University and Paddington station. Other statues are in Bristol, Plymouth, Swindon, Milford Haven and Saltash. A statue in Neyland in Pembrokeshire in Wales was stolen in August 2010. Shortly after his death, he was commemorated at Westminster Abbey in a window on the south side of the nave, which was requested by his family and designed by Richard Norman Shaw.

Contemporary locations bear Brunel's name, such as Brunel University in London, shopping centres in Swindon and also Bletchley, Milton Keynes, and a collection of streets in Exeter: Isambard Terrace, Kingdom Mews, and Brunel Close. A road, car park, and school in his home city of Portsmouth are also named in his honour, along with one of the city's largest public houses. There is an engineering lab building at the University of Plymouth named in his honour.

GWR Castle Class steam locomotive no. 5069 was named Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and BR Western Region class 47 diesel locomotive no. D1662 (later 47484) was also named for him. The 21st-century train operating company Great Western Railway named one of its Class 43s (number 43003) Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 2007.

The words I.K. Brunel Engineer 1859 were added above both portals of the Royal Albert Bridge shortly after his death, which were then partly obscured by maintenance access ladders but were revealed again by Network Rail in 2006 to honour his bicentenary. Two Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) used to construct Crossrail in London from 2013 were named for Brunel's wife Mary and his mother Sophia.

There were various celebrations for the bicentenary in 2006 of Brunel's birth. The Royal Mint struck two £2 coins to "celebrate the 200th anniversary of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his achievements"; the first depicts Brunel with a section of the Royal Albert Bridge, and the second shows the roof of Paddington Station. In the same year the Post Office issued a set of six wide commemorative stamps (SG 2607–2612) showing the Royal Albert Bridge, the Box Tunnel, Paddington Station, the Great Eastern, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and the Maidenhead Railway Bridge.

Railway legacy

At the original Welsh terminus of the GWR at Neyland, sections of the broad gauge rails are used as handrails at the quayside, and information boards there depict various aspects of Brunel's life. There is also a larger-than-life bronze statue of him holding a steamship in one hand and a locomotive in the other. The statue was replaced after the original was stolen.

Brunel is credited with turning the town of Swindon into one of the fastest-growing towns in Europe during the 19th century. Brunel's choice to locate the GWR locomotive sheds there caused a need for housing for the workers, which in turn gave Brunel the impetus to build hospitals, churches and housing estates in what is known today as the 'Railway Village'. According to some sources, Brunel's addition of a Mechanics Institute for recreation and hospitals and clinics for his workers gave Aneurin Bevan the basis for the creation of the National Health Service. The Swindon Steam Railway Museum has many artefacts from Brunel's time on the GWR. The Didcot Railway Centre has a reconstructed segment of 7 ft 1⁄4 in (2,140 mm) track as designed by Brunel and working steam locomotives in the same gauge, as well as a preserved section of his atmospheric railway.

Many of Brunel's bridges are still in use. Brunel's first engineering project, the Thames Tunnel, is now part of the London Overground network. The Brunel Engine House at Rotherhithe, which once housed the steam engines that powered the tunnel pumps, now houses the Brunel Museum dedicated to the work and lives of Marc Isambard and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Many of Brunel's original papers and designs are now held in the Brunel Institute alongside the SS Great Britain in Bristol, and are freely available for researchers and visitors. Several of Brunel's bridges over the GWR were proposed for demolition in plans for the line's electrification in the early years of the 21st century due to clearance issues, but Buckinghamshire County Council negotiated to have further options pursued to save the historic bridges along the line.