LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Great Britain
built 627 days ago
Recently re-awakened interest in the achievements of Britain's most famous engineer - Isambard Kingdom Brunel - reached a climax on 9th April 2006, when the Bicentenary of Brunel's birth was celebrated. This superb new book is intended to be a permanent memorial to that event.
Source:
Brunel was equally ambitious in the design of the GWR’s London terminus, Paddington Station, which he was charged with rebuilding in 1849 to accommodate the crowds expected to converge on London for the 1851 Great Exhibition. He was asked to construct a flexible covered space with not columns to accommodate the railway’s future needs and to outshine the London terminus of the GWR’s arch-rival, the Great Northern Railway, at Euston. In an age when the new railways were regarded as the acme of modernity and sources of future prosperity for provincial cities and towns, public interest in Brunel’s daring schemes for the GWR was intense.
Source:
Building on these successes, Brunel turned to a third ship in 1852, even larger than both of its predecessors, and intended for voyages to India and Australia. The Great Eastern (originally dubbed Leviathan) was cutting-edge technology for its time: almost 700 feet long, fitted out with the most luxurious appointments and capable of carrying over 4000 passengers. It was the first ship that was able to cruise under its own power non-stop from London to New York, and it remained the largest ship built until the turn of the century. Like many of Brunel's ambitious projects, the ship soon ran over budget and behind schedule in the face of a series of momentous technical problems[6].
Source:
The next steamship that Brunel built in Bristol was the Great Britain, together with John Scott Russell. It had an iron hull and was fitted with a propeller with six blades. The Great Britain was designed to carry 250 passengers, 130 crew and 1,200 tonnes of cargo. She made her first voyage from Liverpool to New York in 1845. He was ... responsible for the redesign and construction of many of Britain's major docks including Bristol, Monkwearmouth, Cardiff and Milford Haven.
Source:
Isambard rose to prominence when, aged 20, he was appointed as the chief engineer of his father's greatest achievement, the Thames Tunnel, which runs beneath the river between Rotherhithe and Wapping. The first major sub-river tunnel ever built, it succeeded where other attempts had failed thanks to Marc Brunel's ingenious tunnelling shield – the human-powered forerunner of today's mighty tunnelling machines – which protected workers from cave-in by placing them within a protective casing. Marc Brunel had been inspired to create the shield after observing the habits and anatomy of the shipworm (Teredo navalis). Most modern tunnels are cut in this way, notably the Channel Tunnel between England and France[7].
Source:
Brunel proposed extending the Great Western's route by building the Great Western steamship, fitted out in Blackwall. The ship was to make 22 round voyages from Bristol between 1838 and 1841 before being moved to Liverpool. In 1843 Brunel's second vessel for the company was the Great Britain of 1845, a screw propelled vessel with an iron hull. This was to be dwarfed by Brunel's next ship the Great Eastern, twice as long at 693' and nine times the tonnage! The contract for building this went to Scott Russell who had a yard at Millwall. Some of the timbers used to support the ship remain in situ along with some huge chains.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Great Britain