LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Engineers
built 627 days ago
The University of Bristol, UK, holds over 33,000 pages in the Brunel Collection. This collection contains the personal papers of the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a key figure in the Industrial Revolution. However, despite its importance as a scholarly resource, no electronic catalogue of the collection exists and physical access is limited. In 2003 the University was awarded an AHRB resource enhancement grant to carry out a pilot digitization project to bring this resource to a wider audience via the Internet. This resource will be freely available online by Brunel's bicentenary in 2006. The aims of providing access to a larger audience and understanding more about such a key historical figure sit alongside the technical goals of an open source, open standard, easily extensible and migratable image database and electronic catalogue.
Source:
Isambard considered Gooch as no more than a Resident Engineer and awarded him a salary of £300 per annum against his own £2000. Gooch was at least Isambard's equal, not only intellectually but ... in his energy and commitment to the job. He was far in advance of Isambard as a locomotive engineer. They complemented each other: the one a civil engineering genius, the other a brilliant locomotive engineer. Isambard was short of stature, passionate, wordy, some what theatrical, cultured, charming and artistic; Gooch was tall, gaunt, somewhat puritanical, of few words, without drawing-room charm, a practical man who, unlike Isambard, never stepped outside his subject. Furthermore, Gooch had no overwhelming desire for public acclaim - plain old-fashioned wealth would do for him.
Source:
There were many obstacles in Brunel's path and not all of them engineering ones. Landowners demanded exorbitant sums for their land. There were complaints from Eton college that the visitors from London would pollute the boys' minds. Altogether the legal and other fees just to get the Act through Parliament amounted to £90,000.
Source:
Brunel was the son of a French inventor, and invention was in his blood. He studied mathematics, engineering and precision instrument making and always shone as a natural. He was an 18-hours-a-day workaholic who even managed to squeeze in a visit to the Liverpool & Manchester Railway opening during his three-day honeymoon.
Source:
This year, 2006 marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the most innovative of all Victorian engineers; Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Like others before him and since, Brunel was challenged by the landscape of Wales to develop innovative engineering solutions, working with Welsh industry in his pursuit of excellence.
Source:
Brunel was had quick mind, an unusually rich imagination, and a charismatic driving forceful personality that brooked no opposition. He was active in many public affairs. The “Napoleon of engineers,” he thought more of glory than profit.[3] He died young, leaving an estate of under £90,000, having lost much of his fortune in the “Great Eastern” venture.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Engineers