Isambard Kingdom Brunel

1806 - 1859

How many different ways can you think of to:

• Travel across a river?

• Travel from here to London?

• Travel from England to America?

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born in Portsmouth in 1806.

He went to school in Hove near Brighton in East Sussex.

When Brunel left school, he became an apprentice to a watchmaker in Paris.

When he was 17, Brunel started work in his father's engineering office in London.

His first job was with his father in London, building the Thames Tunnel.

The Thames Tunnel

The tunnel went underneath the River Thames.

After finishing the Thames Tunnel Brunel went to Bristol and won a competition to build a bridge over the River Avon.

He built the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Next, Brunel wanted to build a railway from London to Bristol.

He became Chief Engineer of The Great

Western Railway in 1833.

After building the railway Brunel began building ships to sail from Bristol to New York in America.

He built the SS Great Britain which was made of Iron and powered by steam.

His last ship, The Great Eastern, was the biggest ship in the world at the time.

It was launched in 1858, Brunel died a few months later in 1859.

BBC 100 Greatest Britons 2002.

1. Winston Churchill2. Isambard Kingdom Brunel3. Princess Diana4. Charles Darwin5. William Shakespeare6. Sir Issac Newton7. Queen Elizabeth I8. John Lennon9. Admiral Horatio Nelson10. Oliver Cromwell11. Sir Ernest Shackleton

18. Queen Victoria24. Queen Elizabeth II33. David Beckham40. King Henry VIII41. Charles Dickens52. Florence Nightingale 57. Alexander Graham Bell67. Tony Blair83. J.K Rowling

Suspension Bridges

Which of these bridges is a suspension bridge?

Clifton Suspension Bridge