Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a British civil and mechanical engineer whose railways, bridges, tunnels, and steamships helped shape nineteenth-century transport.

Great Western Railway: A British railway company founded in 1833 to connect London with the west of England. Brunel engineered its broad-gauge main line and designed many of its structures.
Broad Gauge: A railway track gauge wider than the standard gauge that became dominant in Britain. Brunel chose a seven-foot-and-a-quarter-inch gauge for the Great Western Railway.
Marc Isambard Brunel: A French-born British engineer known for the Thames Tunnel and the block-making machinery at Portsmouth Dockyard. Brunel's father trained him and collaborated with him during the Thames Tunnel project.
Royal Navy Dockyards: Shipbuilding and maintenance facilities operated for the British Royal Navy. Brunel's father applied mechanized production at Portsmouth Dockyard, shaping the engineering world Brunel entered.
Railway gauge standardization: The adoption of a common track width so trains can operate across connected railway lines. The eventual defeat of Brunel's broad gauge helped establish Britain's standard gauge.
Thames Tunnel: A tunnel beneath the River Thames, built between Rotherhithe and Wapping and opened in 1843. Brunel worked on its construction with his father, Marc Isambard Brunel.
Box Girder: A structural beam with a hollow, box-shaped cross-section that resists bending and twisting. Brunel used box-like iron structures in major bridge designs, including the Royal Albert Bridge.
Daniel Gooch: A British railway engineer and locomotive designer who became the Great Western Railway's locomotive superintendent. Gooch developed locomotives suited to Brunel's broad-gauge railway.
Great Western Railway Act 1835: An act of Parliament authorizing the Great Western Railway between London and Bristol. The act created the project that made Brunel chief engineer of a major railway.
Transatlantic telegraph cable: A submarine communications cable laid across the Atlantic Ocean to connect Europe and North America. SS Great Eastern later served as the cable-laying ship for the successful 1866 transatlantic cable.

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