Digging under a river in soft sediments was an impossible task, but Marc Brunel solved the problem with the invention of the tunnelling shield - a solution that has formed the basis of modern tunnelling right down to the present day; principles of which were used in the creation of the Channel Tunnel between England & France in recent years.

You can see from the engravings reproduced here that the tunnelling shield was divided into 36 compartments, and each compartment held one miner, who was protected by extensive shoring which allowed a small section of tunnel face to work on. It was hard, dangerous and labour intensive work, and Isambard attempted to be involved in all aspects of the construction - including the digging - when he wasn't travelling the country raising funding and other support.

Although Isambard was an industrial visionary, he also possessed an artists eye for the landscape, and when planning his works his designs always complemented the surroundings they were in.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge project over the Avon Gorge in Bristol (pictured left, as it stands today) demonstrates this as well as testing all the other skills & qualities that Brunel had. It was built at a time of intense competition between ports to retain business and capture substantial growth in trade and economic prosperity. Brunel submitted his radically new design for the bridge (1830) in a competition with Thomas Telford and others. He finally won the design competition - after much debating, as always.

By 1843 the two towers were completed but funds were exhausted. To save money, the committee reduced the height of the towers and didn't go ahead with the planned sphinxes for the tops or the cast iron cladding around them designed to tell the story of the bridge. By 1853 the time span for completion allotted by Parliament expired. The committee sold the ironwork, machinery and equipment to pay the contractors, and much of the material was used on Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge linking Devon and Cornwall at Plymouth.

Brunel died without ever seeing the completion of his bridge. Ironically, his early death inspired the completion of the bridge, as the Institute of Civil Engineers decided to finish the bridge as a memorial to him.

The bridge retains many elements from its original Egyptian style design (which was extremely popular at the time) but as above, the planned sphinxes were sadly omitted from the completed bridge - you can see where they should have sat from the engraving reproduced on the right. One can be fairly sure that were the bridge built during Brunel's lifetime, he would have ensured that the money was found for them from somewhere.

The bridge is to this day in constant heavy daily use and is still a spectacular sight from both above on the cliffs and below by boat.

While Brunel was still in Bristol, he became aware that the civic authorities saw the need for a railway link to London. The Liverpool & Manchester Railway, successfully connected one of England's biggest ports with its largest textile manufacturer. Incidentally, this is generally regarded as the first true railway not because it was the earliest (it wasn't) but because it was the first to carry both passengers and freight solely by the use of steam powered engine.

Liverpool was only one of England's great Atlantic ports, and the merchants of Bristol feared huge loss of business unless they could obtain the benefits of this new technology as well. As there was no nearby manufacturing centre comparable with Manchester, they ambitiously set their sights on linking to London, which would mean building a railway well over four times as long as the Liverpool & Manchester.

Despite the apparent failure of the Clifton Suspension Bridge project, in March 1833, Brunel was appointed by the promoters of the projected Bristol to London railway to complete a preliminary survey of the route by May. To do this, he designed what he called his "Flying Hearse" - a streamlined carriage which doubled as office and bedroom - and home for a humidor of 50 cigars. Six months later, the final plans were completed and in March 1834 the findings went to the customary parliamentary committee for scrutiny.

Railway location was controversial, since private landowners as well as towns had to be dealt with. Quite frankly, the landed gentry did not want a messy, noisy railway anywhere near them. The Duke of Wellington (of Waterloo fame) was certainly against it & is famously reported to have said : "... it will only encourage the lower classes to move about." Brunel and his team had their work cut out for them just in persuading the Parliamentary committee to let the work commence.

There are three statues of note within Paddington Station - a seated statue of Isambard Brunel by John Doubleday at the side entrance to platform 1 (the picture was taken before his move there); a combined World War I & II Memorial by Charles Sargeant Jagger - a large, solid-looking figure of a cloaked soldier in full battle gear halfway down platform 1, but perhaps the most photographed statue of them all is found in the inner concourse area.

This is of Paddington Bear, based on Michael Bond's whimsical series of 11 books first published in 1958 based around the adventures of a small bear newly arrived from "Darkest Peru" and is a magnet for tourists & children of all ages.

As late as the 1890s, sailing clipper ships were still the preferred method of long-distance travel. There were several reasons for this. The wind, of course, is free and, while the navies of the world could and did discount the cost of coal, hard-headed commercial men needed more convincing - especially considering the notorious unreliability of early steam engines and their restricted range. At first, just as sail had been used as an addition to oared galleys, steam was used as an adjunct to sail. A ship's engine would be fired up only when the wind dropped - an approach which combined economy with the reliability of sail and the ability to keep moving in any conditions.

Brunel was to change all of this. Each of his three ships represented a major step forward in naval architecture. His Great Western of 1838 was the first steamer designed to cross the Atlantic, while in 1845 he constructed the Great Britain, the first propeller-driven ocean-going ship.

The SS Great Britain lies now in Bristol's historic harbour - today a tourist and recreation attraction salvaged from rusty oblivion, but in its day was by far the largest ship in the world - over 100 feet longer than her rivals. The Great Britain was made of iron and also built in Bristol, 322 feet in length. The ship was launched in 1843 and was the first screw driven iron ship to cross the Atlantic.

For more information on the ship and its restoration, visit http://www.ssgreatbritain.org/

With the Great Eastern project, Brunel had produced something that was at the leading edge of the available technologies of the time. The vision and the design concepts were always pushing ahead, but much that was needed was way too ahead of their time - the necessary component materials were not yet available or possible to make non-degrading flexible material to replace leather fan belting, for example.

For this project, he was required by the Great Eastern Company to work with a collaborator - the marine engineer and shipbuilder John Scott Russell (pictured far right, with Brunel second from the left), who was awarded the contract to build the vessel in his own shipyards on the Isle of Dogs in the Thames, London. However, Brunel soon felt he was let down by what he saw as Russell's poor management practices. Among other things, Russell was very low in his estimates and money was soon a problem.

The first attempt to launch the Great Eastern on November 3, 1857 was widely publicized and tickets were sold to the public in an attempt to raise some much needed capital.

This came as a surprise to Brunel, who had anticipated a quiet and businesslike launch and instead found the shipyard filled with thousands of spectators waiting to see the largest object ever moved by man.

The launch date could not be moved, and the decision to go ahead was reluctantly made.

This was a great mistake.

The launch attempt was both a public relations disaster and a human tragedy. The resulting circus like atmosphere of the revelling crowds led to difficulties in communications. Chains snapped on capstans leading to the death of one worker and injury to a half dozen others.

Although Brunel himself never made this claim either in private or in public, there were many rumours of sabotage made by rivals wanting Brunel and his project out of the way. Whatever the truth or lack thereof, the ship now had to be virtually pushed into the Thames and despite almost constant attempts needing hydraulic rams, she did not take the water until January 31, 1858. Fitting out lasted until September 1859.

Deconstruction work started on 1 January 1889, on the banks of the Mersey, near Liverpool, where the great ship had lain rusting for some time.

Taking the iron hull apart was a matter of brute force, and over the next two years men chiselled, levered and hammered its plates apart until there was nothing left. The destruction of the ship gave birth to the macabre legend that two skeletons, the remains of a riveter and his boy apprentice, were found inside the sealed double bottomed hull. At the time it was thought that perhaps it had been the souls of these poor unfortunates that had cursed the great ship with so much bad luck.

This one engineer in 19th century Britain transformed the landscape and the lives of everyday people by creating and raising what we today would call "venture capital" to build the ideas, devices and systems of new technology - bridges, railways, tunnels, viaducts and ships - that transformed peoples lives and the world as a whole. Inland journeys of hours rather than days became normal. Journies formerly beyond the imagination or reach of the average person were now possible and affordable. The crossing of the Atlantic became safe with the availability of iron-clad, steam driven, screw propelled vessels.

Some of Brunel's greatest achievements involved the use & development of industrial strength brick, decorative cast iron, viaducts and bridges in the dawning of the age of mass transportation. Many of his engineering principles are still used to this day - some of which have never been bettered. Many of his structures are in daily use today - and undergoing far heavier use than even he could have anticipated.