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1 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Land transport, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Ports and shipping, Public utilities, Railways and locomotives[br]b. 9 April 1806 Portsea, Hampshire, Englandd. 15 September 1859 18 Duke Street, St James's, London, England[br]English civil and mechanical engineer.[br]The son of Marc Isambard Brunel and Sophia Kingdom, he was educated at a private boarding-school in Hove. At the age of 14 he went to the College of Caen and then to the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris, after which he was apprenticed to Louis Breguet. In 1822 he returned from France and started working in his father's office, while spending much of his time at the works of Maudslay, Sons \& Field.From 1825 to 1828 he worked under his father on the construction of the latter's Thames Tunnel, occupying the position of Engineer-in-Charge, exhibiting great courage and presence of mind in the emergencies which occurred not infrequently. These culminated in January 1828 in the flooding of the tunnel and work was suspended for seven years. For the next five years the young engineer made abortive attempts to find a suitable outlet for his talents, but to little avail. Eventually, in 1831, his design for a suspension bridge over the River Avon at Clifton Gorge was accepted and he was appointed Engineer. (The bridge was eventually finished five years after Brunel's death, as a memorial to him, the delay being due to inadequate financing.) He next planned and supervised improvements to the Bristol docks. In March 1833 he was appointed Engineer of the Bristol Railway, later called the Great Western Railway. He immediately started to survey the route between London and Bristol that was completed by late August that year. On 5 July 1836 he married Mary Horsley and settled into 18 Duke Street, Westminster, London, where he also had his office. Work on the Bristol Railway started in 1836. The foundation stone of the Clifton Suspension Bridge was laid the same year. Whereas George Stephenson had based his standard railway gauge as 4 ft 8½ in (1.44 m), that or a similar gauge being usual for colliery wagonways in the Newcastle area, Brunel adopted the broader gauge of 7 ft (2.13 m). The first stretch of the line, from Paddington to Maidenhead, was opened to traffic on 4 June 1838, and the whole line from London to Bristol was opened in June 1841. The continuation of the line through to Exeter was completed and opened on 1 May 1844. The normal time for the 194-mile (312 km) run from Paddington to Exeter was 5 hours, at an average speed of 38.8 mph (62.4 km/h) including stops. The Great Western line included the Box Tunnel, the longest tunnel to that date at nearly two miles (3.2 km).Brunel was the engineer of most of the railways in the West Country, in South Wales and much of Southern Ireland. As railway networks developed, the frequent break of gauge became more of a problem and on 9 July 1845 a Royal Commission was appointed to look into it. In spite of comparative tests, run between Paddington-Didcot and Darlington-York, which showed in favour of Brunel's arrangement, the enquiry ruled in favour of the narrow gauge, 274 miles (441 km) of the former having been built against 1,901 miles (3,059 km) of the latter to that date. The Gauge Act of 1846 forbade the building of any further railways in Britain to any gauge other than 4 ft 8 1/2 in (1.44 m).The existence of long and severe gradients on the South Devon Railway led to Brunel's adoption of the atmospheric railway developed by Samuel Clegg and later by the Samuda brothers. In this a pipe of 9 in. (23 cm) or more in diameter was laid between the rails, along the top of which ran a continuous hinged flap of leather backed with iron. At intervals of about 3 miles (4.8 km) were pumping stations to exhaust the pipe. Much trouble was experienced with the flap valve and its lubrication—freezing of the leather in winter, the lubricant being sucked into the pipe or eaten by rats at other times—and the experiment was abandoned at considerable cost.Brunel is to be remembered for his two great West Country tubular bridges, the Chepstow and the Tamar Bridge at Saltash, with the latter opened in May 1859, having two main spans of 465 ft (142 m) and a central pier extending 80 ft (24 m) below high water mark and allowing 100 ft (30 m) of headroom above the same. His timber viaducts throughout Devon and Cornwall became a feature of the landscape. The line was extended ultimately to Penzance.As early as 1835 Brunel had the idea of extending the line westwards across the Atlantic from Bristol to New York by means of a steamship. In 1836 building commenced and the hull left Bristol in July 1837 for fitting out at Wapping. On 31 March 1838 the ship left again for Bristol but the boiler lagging caught fire and Brunel was injured in the subsequent confusion. On 8 April the ship set sail for New York (under steam), its rival, the 703-ton Sirius, having left four days earlier. The 1,340-ton Great Western arrived only a few hours after the Sirius. The hull was of wood, and was copper-sheathed. In 1838 Brunel planned a larger ship, some 3,000 tons, the Great Britain, which was to have an iron hull.The Great Britain was screwdriven and was launched on 19 July 1843,289 ft (88 m) long by 51 ft (15.5 m) at its widest. The ship's first voyage, from Liverpool to New York, began on 26 August 1845. In 1846 it ran aground in Dundrum Bay, County Down, and was later sold for use on the Australian run, on which it sailed no fewer than thirty-two times in twenty-three years, also serving as a troop-ship in the Crimean War. During this war, Brunel designed a 1,000-bed hospital which was shipped out to Renkioi ready for assembly and complete with shower-baths and vapour-baths with printed instructions on how to use them, beds and bedding and water closets with a supply of toilet paper! Brunel's last, largest and most extravagantly conceived ship was the Great Leviathan, eventually named The Great Eastern, which had a double-skinned iron hull, together with both paddles and screw propeller. Brunel designed the ship to carry sufficient coal for the round trip to Australia without refuelling, thus saving the need for and the cost of bunkering, as there were then few bunkering ports throughout the world. The ship's construction was started by John Scott Russell in his yard at Millwall on the Thames, but the building was completed by Brunel due to Russell's bankruptcy in 1856. The hull of the huge vessel was laid down so as to be launched sideways into the river and then to be floated on the tide. Brunel's plan for hydraulic launching gear had been turned down by the directors on the grounds of cost, an economy that proved false in the event. The sideways launch with over 4,000 tons of hydraulic power together with steam winches and floating tugs on the river took over two months, from 3 November 1857 until 13 January 1858. The ship was 680 ft (207 m) long, 83 ft (25 m) beam and 58 ft (18 m) deep; the screw was 24 ft (7.3 m) in diameter and paddles 60 ft (18.3 m) in diameter. Its displacement was 32,000 tons (32,500 tonnes).The strain of overwork and the huge responsibilities that lay on Brunel began to tell. He was diagnosed as suffering from Bright's disease, or nephritis, and spent the winter travelling in the Mediterranean and Egypt, returning to England in May 1859. On 5 September he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralysed, and he died ten days later at his Duke Street home.[br]Further ReadingL.T.C.Rolt, 1957, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, London: Longmans Green. J.Dugan, 1953, The Great Iron Ship, Hamish Hamilton.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Brunel, Isambard Kingdom
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2 Brunel, Sir Marc Isambard
[br]b. 26 April 1769 Hacqueville, Normandy, Franced. 12 December 1849 London, England[br]French (naturalized American) engineer of the first Thames Tunnel.[br]His mother died when he was 7 years old, a year later he went to college in Gisors and later to the Seminary of Sainte-Nicaise at Rouen. From 1786 to 1792 he followed a career in the French navy as a junior officer. In Rouen he met Sophie Kingdom, daughter of a British Navy contractor, whom he was later to marry. In July 1793 Marc sailed for America from Le Havre. He was to remain there for six years, and became an American citizen, occupying himself as a land surveyor and as an architect. He became Chief Engineer to the City of New York. At General Hamilton's dinner table he learned that the British Navy used over 100,000 ship's blocks every year; this started him thinking how the manufacture of blocks could be mechanized. He roughed out a set of machines to do the job, resigned his post as Chief Engineer and sailed for England in February 1799.In London he was shortly introduced to Henry Maudslay, to whom he showed the drawings of his proposed machines and with whom he placed an order for their manufacture. The first machines were completed by mid-1803. Altogether Maudslay produced twenty-one machines for preparing the shells, sixteen for preparing the sheaves and eight other machines.In February 1809 he saw troops at Portsmouth returning from Corunna, the victors, with their lacerated feet bound in rags. He resolved to mechanize the production of boots for the Army and, within a few months, had twenty-four disabled soldiers working the machinery he had invented and installed near his Battersea sawmill. The plant could produce 400 pairs of boots and shoes a day, selling at between 9s. 6d. and 20s. a pair. One day in 1817 at Chatham dockyard he observed a piece of scrap keel timber, showing the ravages wrought by the shipworm, Teredo navalis, which, with its proboscis protected by two jagged concave triangular shells, consumes, digests and finally excretes the ship's timbers as it gnaws its way through them. The excreted material provided material for lining the walls of the tunnel the worm had drilled. Brunel decided to imitate the action of the shipworm on a large scale: the Thames Tunnel was to occupy Marc Brunel for most of the remainder of his life. Boring started in March 1825 and was completed by March 1843. The project lay dormant for long periods, but eventually the 1,200 ft (366 m)-long tunnel was completed. Marc Isambard Brunel died at the age of 80 and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1814. Vice-President, Royal Society 1832.Further ReadingP.Clements, 1970, Marc Isambard Brunel, London: Longmans Green.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Brunel, Sir Marc Isambard
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3 Civil engineering
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4 Ports and shipping
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Armstrong, Sir William GeorgeEgerton, FrancisLi GaoPeter the GreatShen GuaStanhope, Charles -
5 Smith, Sir Francis Pettit
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 9 February 1808 Copperhurst Farm, near Hythe, Kent, Englandd. 12 February 1874 South Kensington, London, England[br]English inventor of the screw propeller.[br]Smith was the only son of Charles Smith, Postmaster at Hythe, and his wife Sarah (née Pettit). After education at a private school in Ashford, Kent, he took to farming, first on Romney Marsh, then at Hendon, Middlesex. As a boy, he showed much skill in the construction of model boats, especially in devising their means of propulsion. He maintained this interest into adult life and in 1835 he made a model propelled by a screw driven by a spring. This worked so well that he became convinced that the screw propeller offered a better method of propulsion than the paddle wheels that were then in general use. This notion so fired his enthusiasm that he virtually gave up farming to devote himself to perfecting his invention. The following year he produced a better model, which he successfully demonstrated to friends on his farm at Hendon and afterwards to the public at the Adelaide Gallery in London. On 31 May 1836 Smith was granted a patent for the propulsion of vessels by means of a screw.The idea of screw propulsion was not new, however, for it had been mooted as early as the seventeenth century and since then several proposals had been advanced, but without successful practical application. Indeed, simultaneously but quite independently of Smith, the Swedish engineer John Ericsson had invented the ship's propeller and obtained a patent on 13 July 1836, just weeks after Smith. But Smith was completely unaware of this and pursued his own device in the belief that he was the sole inventor.With some financial and technical backing, Smith was able to construct a 10 ton boat driven by a screw and powered by a steam engine of about 6 hp (4.5 kW). After showing it off to the public, Smith tried it out at sea, from Ramsgate round to Dover and Hythe, returning in stormy weather. The screw performed well in both calm and rough water. The engineering world seemed opposed to the new method of propulsion, but the Admiralty gave cautious encouragement in 1839 by ordering that the 237 ton Archimedes be equipped with a screw. It showed itself superior to the Vulcan, one of the fastest paddle-driven ships in the Navy. The ship was put through its paces in several ports, including Bristol, where Isambard Kingdom Brunel was constructing his Great Britain, the first large iron ocean-going vessel. Brunel was so impressed that he adapted his ship for screw propulsion.Meanwhile, in spite of favourable reports, the Admiralty were dragging their feet and ordered further trials, fitting Smith's four-bladed propeller to the Rattler, then under construction and completed in 1844. The trials were a complete success and propelled their lordships of the Admiralty to a decision to equip twenty ships with screw propulsion, under Smith's supervision.At last the superiority of screw propulsion was generally accepted and virtually universally adopted. Yet Smith gained little financial reward for his invention and in 1850 he retired to Guernsey to resume his farming life. In 1860 financial pressures compelled him to accept the position of Curator of Patent Models at the Patent Museum in South Kensington, London, a post he held until his death. Belated recognition by the Government, then headed by Lord Palmerston, came in 1855 with the grant of an annual pension of £200. Two years later Smith received unofficial recognition when he was presented with a national testimonial, consisting of a service of plate and nearly £3,000 in cash subscribed largely by the shipbuilding and engineering community. Finally, in 1871 Smith was honoured with a knighthood.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1871.Further ReadingObituary, 1874, Illustrated London News (7 February).1856, On the Invention and Progress of the Screw Propeller, London (provides biographical details).Smith and his invention are referred to in papers in Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 14 (1934): 9; 19 (1939): 145–8, 155–7, 161–4, 237–9.LRDBiographical history of technology > Smith, Sir Francis Pettit
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6 Froude, William
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 1810 Dartington, Devon, Englandd. 4 May 1879 Simonstown, South Africa[br]English naval architect; pioneer of experimental ship-model research.[br]Froude was educated at a preparatory school at Buckfastleigh, and then at Westminster School, London, before entering Oriel College, Oxford, to read mathematics and classics. Between 1836 and 1838 he served as a pupil civil engineer, and then he joined the staff of Isambard Kingdom Brunel on various railway engineering projects in southern England, including the South Devon Atmospheric Railway. He retired from professional work in 1846 and lived with his invalid father at Dartington Parsonage. The next twenty years, while apparently unproductive, were important to Froude as he concentrated his mind on difficult mathematical and scientific problems. Froude married in 1839 and had five children, one of whom, Robert Edmund Froude (1846–1924), was to succeed him in later years in his research work for the Admiralty. Following the death of his father, Froude moved to Paignton, and there commenced his studies on the resistance of solid bodies moving through fluids. Initially these were with hulls towed through a house roof storage tank by wires taken over a pulley and attached to falling weights, but the work became more sophisticated and was conducted on ponds and the open water of a creek near Dartmouth. Froude published work on the rolling of ships in the second volume of the Transactions of the then new Institution of Naval Architects and through this became acquainted with Sir Edward Reed. This led in 1870 to the Admiralty's offer of £2,000 towards the cost of an experimental tank for ship models at Torquay. The tank was completed in 1872 and tests were carried out on the model of HMS Greyhound following full-scale towing trials which had commenced on the actual ship the previous year. From this Froude enunciated his Law of Comparisons, which defines the rules concerning the relationship of the power required to move geometrically similar floating bodies across fluids. It enabled naval architects to predict, from a study of a much less expensive and smaller model, the resistance to motion and the power required to move a full-size ship. The work in the tank led Froude to design a model-cutting machine, dynamometers and machinery for the accurate ruling of graph paper. Froude's work, and later that of his son, was prodigious and covered many fields of ship design, including powering, propulsion, rolling, steering and stability. In only six years he had stamped his academic authority on the new science of hydrodynamics, served on many national committees and corresponded with fellow researchers throughout the world. His health suffered and he sailed for South Africa to recuperate, but he contracted dysentery and died at Simonstown. He will be remembered for all time as one of the greatest "fathers" of naval architecture.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS. Honorary LLD Glasgow University.Bibliography1955, The Papers of William Froude, London: Institution of Naval Architects (the Institution also published a memoir by Sir Westcott Abell and an evaluation of his work by Dr R.W.L. Gawn of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors; this volume reprints all Froude's papers from the Institution of Naval Architects and other sources as diverse as the British Association, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Institution of Civil Engineers.Further ReadingA.T.Crichton, 1990, "William and Robert Edmund Froude and the evolution of the ship model experimental tank", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 61:33–49.FMW -
7 Land transport
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Austin, HerbertHamilton, Harold LeeIssigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold ConstantineMa JunMorris, William RichardSauerbrun, Charles de -
8 Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Clement, JosephDu ShiDu YuGongshu PanLi BingMa JunMurdock, WilliamSomerset, EdwardBiographical history of technology > Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering
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9 Public utilities
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10 Railways and locomotives
Biographical history of technology > Railways and locomotives
См. также в других словарях:
Isambard Kingdom Brunel — en 1857 Naissance 9 avril … Wikipédia en Français
Isambard Kingdom Brunel — Brunel antes de la botadura del SS Great Eastern (1857). Naci … Wikipedia Español
Isambard Kingdom Brunel — Brunel mit Zylinder und Zigarre vor der riesigen aufgewickelten Ankerkette des Dampfschiffes Great Eastern, Fotografie von Robert Howlett Isambard Kingdom Brunel (* 9. April 1806 in Portsmouth; † 15. September 1859 in London) war ein britischer… … Deutsch Wikipedia
Isambard Kingdom Brunel — [Isambard Kingdom Brunel] (1806–69) an English engineer, famous for his ambitious designs for ships, bridges and railways. He designed the ↑Clifton Suspension Bridge and the largest ships that had ever been built at the time, including the Great… … Useful english dictionary
Isambard Kingdom Brunel — Infobox Engineer image size = caption = Brunel before the launching of the Great Eastern name = Isambard Kingdom Brunel nationality = birth date =birth date|1806|4|9|df=y birth place = Portsmouth, United Kingdom death date =Death date and… … Wikipedia
Isambard Kingdom Brunel — ➡ Brunel * * * … Universalium
Isambert Kingdom Brunel — Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel en 1857 Naissance 9 … Wikipédia en Français
Brunel, Isambard Kingdom — born April 9, 1806, Portsmouth, Hampshire, Eng. died Sept. 15, 1859, London British civil and mechanical engineer. He was the son of Marc Brunel. His introduction of the broad gauge railway, with rails 7 ft (2 m) apart, made possible high speeds… … Universalium
Brunel , Isambard Kingdom — (1806–1859) British engineer Brunel s father, Marc Brunel (1769–1849), a French emigré and distinguished engineer, arrived in England in 1799. He sent his son to Paris in 1820 to learn mathematics and engineering. Brunel returned to England in… … Scientists
Brunel, Isambard Kingdom — (1806–1859) British engineer; son of Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (1769–1849), also an engineer … Bryson’s dictionary for writers and editors
Brunel, Isambard Kingdom — (9 abr. 1806, Portsmouth, Hampshire, Inglaterra–15 sep.1859, Londres). Ingeniero civil y mecánico británico. Era hijo de Marc Brunel. Su introducción del ferrocarril de trocha ancha, con rieles separados 2 m (7 pies) entre sí, posibilitó alcanzar … Enciclopedia Universal
