LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Marc Brunel
built 627 days ago
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the son of Marc Isambard Brunel, a French engineer who escaped the revolutionary turmoil of France in 1793 by immigrating to the United States, where he became an American citizen and engineered severalprojects, including the Hudson-Champlain Canal. In 1799 Marc Brunel moved toEngland and married Sophia Kingdom, an Englishwoman who had begun corresponding with Brunel while she was imprisoned during the French Revolution.
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Their son Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born at Portsea in 1806. Marc made sure that the boy had a theoretical education as well as practical engineering apprenticeship. Isambard attended school in Chelsea and Hove, but as the best mathematical education was to be had in France, he was sent to study there, at Caen College in 1820 and then at Lycée Henri IV in Paris, where he stayed with the family of the horologist Louis Breguet.
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In 1843 while performing a conjuring trick for the amusement of his children, Brunel accidentally inhaled a half-sovereign coin which became lodged in his windpipe. A special pair of forceps failed to remove it, as did a machine to shake it loose devised by Brunel himself. Eventually, at the suggestion of Sir Marc, Isambard was strapped to a board and turned upside-down, and the coin was jerked free[21].
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The second memorial was unveiled in 2006, the bicentenary of Brunel's birth, as it was felt that the original didn't do justice to the memory of one of Portsmouth's most famous sons. It wasn't until March 2007 that the sculpture was added to the plinth.
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Marc Brunel