Brunel Isambard Kingdom

Brunel, Isambard Kingdom, engineer, was born in 1806 at Portsmouth. At the age of twenty he assisted his father, Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, in the building of the Thames Tunnel; and as engineer to the Great Western Railway, to which he was appointed in 1833, he carried out his plans for the broad-gauge system, and had the construction of all the works on the line. Among his chief works were the Great Western, the first steamship employed in regular Atlantic service; the Great Britain, the first large vessel with a screw propeller; and the Great Eastern. He also built Hungerford bridge at Charing Cross, the Clifton suspension bridge, and some of our principal docks. He died in 1859.