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Brunel beside the chains used to launch the Great Eastern. Robert Howlett. Public domain or freely licensed; see source record.
1806–1859
Engineer of railways, bridges, tunnels and pioneering steamships.
Direct answers to common questions about Isambard Kingdom Brunel, followed by the full sourced biography.
Engineer of railways, bridges, tunnels and pioneering steamships. Brunel worked with his father on the Thames Tunnel before becoming engineer of the Great Western Railway. He promoted broad-gauge railways and designed ships intended to extend an integrated transport system across the Atlantic. His projects combined technical ambition with financial risk, dangerous labour and imperial.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel is particularly known for Engineer of railways, bridges, tunnels and pioneering steamships., Industrial Revolution.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel lived 1806–1859. This profile places that life within 19th Century and Industrial Revolution.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's career belongs within Industrial Revolution. Industrial innovation joined invention to capital, labour, patents, raw materials and global markets. Engineering achievement should be read alongside workplace danger and environmental change. The central subjects here are the events behind this summary: Engineer of railways, bridges, tunnels and pioneering.
Brunel worked with his father on the Thames Tunnel before becoming engineer of the Great Western Railway. He promoted broad-gauge railways and designed ships intended to extend an integrated transport system across the Atlantic. His projects combined technical ambition with financial risk, dangerous labour and imperial commerce.
Brunel worked with his father on the Thames Tunnel before becoming engineer of the Great Western Railway. He promoted broad-gauge railways and designed ships intended to extend an integrated transport system across the Atlantic. His projects combined technical ambition with financial risk, dangerous labour and imperial commerce.
1806: Born. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born in 1806. 19th Century: Historical career. Engineer of railways, bridges, tunnels and pioneering steamships.
1859: Died. Isambard Kingdom Brunel died in 1859.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's career belongs within Industrial Revolution. Industrial innovation joined invention to capital, labour, patents, raw materials and global markets. Engineering achievement should be read alongside workplace danger and environmental change. The central subjects here are the events behind this summary: Engineer of railways, bridges, tunnels and pioneering steamships.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born in 1806.
Engineer of railways, bridges, tunnels and pioneering steamships.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel died in 1859.
A society of extraordinary wealth and invention shaped equally by inequality, political conflict and imperial power.
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Steam engines and factories transformed production, but industrialisation was also a history of labour discipline, global cotton, urban disease and political conflict.
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