LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Father
built 628 days ago
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born on April 9, 1806, in Portsmouth. His father, Marc Isambard Brunel, was a prominent engineer, and he determined that his son should follow in his footsteps. Brunel the younger was educated in France, and at the tender age of 20 he became resident engineer on his father's Thames Tunnel project.
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Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born on 9 April 1806 in Portsmouth. His father Mark was a French engineer who had fled France during the Revolution. Brunel was educated both in England and in France.
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On this tunnel Brunel was working under his father. The first major work which he undertook on his own account was the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Here he became involved in a conflict with another famous engineer of the pioneer generation Thomas Telford which foreshadowed his later clash with George Stephenson. The design for the bridge was put out to competition and the ageing Telford he was then over seventy was asked to adjudicate. Now Telford had recently experienced trouble with his famous Menai Suspension Bridge. Gales sweeping through the Menai Straits had set up excessive movement in the suspended platform, so much so that damage had been caused and Telford had been compelled to alter his construction in several respects.
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His father, Sir Marc Isambard Brunel settled in England in 1799 after fleeing the French revolution in 1793 to work firstly as an engineer in the USA and finally to develop many famous public works in England. Isambard Kingdom participated in many of these works.
Brunel was a Frenchman, born in Hacqueville, Normandy, to a farming family. His father, a religious man, intended him to become a priest, but Marc had different ideas. He was interested in woodworking, and anything that had to do with tools and building. His father gave up on making him a priest, and instead Marc enlisted in Louis XVI's navy in 1785 and sailed to the West Indies.
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Isambard Brunel was born in 1806 in Portsmouth, England. Demonstrating an early aptitude for mathematics, he was sent as a 14-year-old to college in France, where he studied and apprenticed in the design of mechanical instruments.At the age of 20 Brunel was appointed resident engineer of his father's Thames River Tunnel project, and it was during this early experience that Brunel'slegendary resilience and flamboyance were first publicly realized. Brunel tenaciously overcame many obstacles, but the project, overwhelmed with mishaps,was aborted when an undetected low section in the river bed caused a collapse and flooded part of the tunnel in 1828, nearly drowning Brunel. The tunnelwas not completed until nearly fifteen years later.
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