BRUNEL, ISAMBARD KINGDOM Eng lish engineer, the designer of the first transatlantic steamer, only son of Sir M. I. Brunel, was born at Portsmouth on April 9, 18o6. At 14 he was sent to Paris, to study at the College Henri Quatre. In 1823 he entered his father's office as assistant-engineer, just at the time when the project of the Thames tunnel was beginning to take shape; and from 1825, when the work was begun, till 1828, when it was stopped by an irruption of the river, he was both nominal and actual resident engineer. He de signed (1831) the suspension bridge over the Avon at Clifton, which was not completed until 1864, and in 1841-45, built the old Hungerford suspension bridge (London), displaced in 1862 by the Charing Cross railway bridge.
In March 1833 Brunel, at the age of twenty-seven, was ap pointed engineer of the newly-projected Great Western railway. The famous "battle of the gauges" arose out of his introduction of the broad (7 f t.) gauge on that line. The last and greatest of Brunel's railway works was the Royal Albert bridge over the river Tamar at Saltash, constructed between 1853 and Brunel took a leading part in the systematic development of ocean steam navigation. As early as October 1835 he had sug gested to the directors of the Great Western railway, that they should "make it longer, and have a steamboat to go from Bristol to New York, and call it the Great Western." The project was then taken up and the "Great Western" steamship designed by Brunel, and built (1838) at Bristol under his superintendence, was the first steamship built to make regular voyages across the Atlantic. He then designed the "Great Britain," which was the first large iron steamship, the largest ship afloat at that time, and the first large ship in which the screw-propeller was used. She made her first voyage from Liverpool to New York in 5845. Brunel's conception of a "great ship" was realized in the gigantic vessel, the `'Great Eastern," put afloat on Jan. 31, 1858, but her engineer, overworked and worn out with worry, broke down and did not see her begin her first voyage on Sept. 7, 1859. On Sept.
15 he died at his house in Westminster.
Brunel was employed in the construction of many docks and piers, as at Monkwearmouth, Bristol, Plymouth, Briton Ferry, Brentford and Milford Haven. He was a zealous promoter of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and was a member of the com mittee on the section of machinery and of the building committee. He paid much attention to the improvement of large guns, and designed a floating gun-carriage for the attack on Kronstadt in the Russian War he also designed and superintended the construction of the hospital buildings at Erenkeui on the Dardanelles (1855).
See The Life of I. K. Brunel, C.E. (187o), by his son, Isambard Brunel.