Brunel, the unconventional engineer

Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern, photograph by Robert Howlett. Now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ask anyone to name a famous English engineer and I’ll eat a stovepipe hat if nine times out of ten you don’t get the same name in reply.  He was voted the second greatest Briton of all time in a BBC survey in 2002 (pipped to the number one spot by Winston Churchill, and thrashing Newton who appeared sixth). Although he was, in fact half French and British (and bilingual) and lesser known on this side of the Channel now.

The man in question is of course Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the “Little Giant” with the big hat, rarely photographed without a cigar, who crammed so much into his 53 years.  Reading the long list of projects in which he had a hand is like a roll call of everything that was innovative, daring and (at times) downright audacious in Victorian physics and engineering.

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