Isambard only spent two years in French education, as in 1822 he sat an entrance exam for the Polytechnique, but failed, so went working for his father.

 

If the Great Western was reasonably conventional, Isambard’s second ship was anything but, as he once more tore up the rule book to produce the mighty Great Britain. She was the world’s largest ship, built of iron, with a screw propeller and no paddles this time. It is a testimony to the genius of the man, that his propeller, a model of his inventive mind, was only 5% less efficient than a modern, computer designed example. When the ship sailed into New York, the crowds were awe struck. This was the future model for the world to follow, with such innovative firsts as, watertight bulkheads. Tragically, the ship ran aground in Ireland on only her fifth voyage. The captain thought it was the Isle of Man! Any other ship would have been torn apart by a winter of gales, but the Great Britain survived the winter and was successfully refloated the following spring, but by now, she had bankrupted the Great Western Steamship Company and so she was sold to Gibbs, Bright & Co and put on the Australia run, carrying 600 emigrants on the first trip alone and during the Crimean war and the Indian Rebellion, she was pressed into service as a troop ship. After a brilliantly successful 23 years on Australian service, she was amazingly remodelled as a sailing ship, actually having her iron hull sheathed in wood. Alas, the great ship was caught in a gale whilst travelling to Panama and dismasted. It eventually arrived at the Falkland Islands, where it was used a store for wool. In 1937, she was deemed to not be worthy of that ignominious task and left to rot. The story does have a happy ending though, as in 1970, she was rescued and towed back to Britain, where her restoration began. She now sits in a dry dock in her home city of Bristol, a fitting testamony to the genius that was IKB.

So you limeys are claiming him along with James Paris Lee too? 

 

T-Dog

We have covered the Great Eastern previously, in another thread, but to reiterate. In an age (the Victorian age) of colossal engineering feats, the Great eastern stands out as the most remarkable feat of that amazing age. It was meant to carry 4000 passengers, none stop to Australia, along with 600 tons of cargo. It was like turning up with the Saturn V rocket in WW1.. It would be another 50 years before a ship was built of comparable size. Although it ran way over budget, it did set a precedence for economy, which would be adopted by all future shipbuilders, in that it used only two sizes of plate and two sizes of angle iron. It has to be said, many of the financial increases were caused by Brunel himself, who could not leave well alone and constantly amended his specifications. The pressure of the undertaking, along with his failing health, finally killed him in 1859 and so departed the greatest engineer in history, a man of unrivalled originality of thought.

Tom, re 22.... we've no choice, as he was born and raised here, spending all but 2 years of his life here. Sorry about that.

Ref # 21. I went on board the SS Great Britain at Bristol last year. She's a marvellous vessel.

 

One of the last photies taken of him, wearing the troubled look of a man struggling to launch the Great Eastern. It's a typical pose, complete with his mandatory cigar. He smoked prestigious amounts of them in his lifetime.

 

A model of the Great Eastern

Ref #24, okay major by those standards we claim James Paris Lee then.

 

T-Dog

If he's yours, then by all means stake your claim

Brunel’s ability to dazzle and enthuse potential investors is legendary and even though he left a trail of  insolvencies in his wake, he was never short of replacements and such was the case when he proposed one of his most incredible ideas, an atmospheric railway. The basic principle was brilliant and produced a train that did an amazing 64MPH and was both smokeless and silent, an almost unnerving, mystical beast at the time. The propulsion? a simple vacuum. Brunel built a long, continuous, grooved cylinder, with a piston inside, connected to the carriage above, through the groove, with the connection able to slide along that groove, as it went. Steam engines, along the line, extracted the air before the train and the vacuum did the rest, with the vacuum being maintained around the cylinder arm to the train, by use of leather strips. It was brilliant in principle, but the reality was�? It was simply too far ahead of the chemistry and engineering accuracy of the technology of the day to translate a magnificent theory into brute practice. The cylinder castings lacked the desired metallurgy to survive continuous use and were often inaccurately cast, but most alarming was the material used to maintain the vacuum around the arm, which was leather. The leather froze and broke and was constantly under attack from hungry rats, which caused a breakdown in the vacuum. In less than two years, the line was falling apart. The cost of replacing the leather alone was £25.000 and so the idea became a costly fiasco and another trail of investors had their ban balances mugged.

But the interesting thing is we made our railways honestly unlike the Yanks. Read about President Lincoln, Jay Gould, Credit mobilier, James Fisk. Tammnany Hall. Astor.

Bow not the way I read it by Time-Life History of the Old West "the Railwaymen". Who needs to go to Harvard when he's got that book?

 

The way I understand it the government (and Lincoln was very good at stealing land ) owned all the USA West of the Missouri except that owned by the British Emperor Norton in California. 

 

So the UP and CP were paid by a band of land 20 miles North and South of the line, plus an agreed mileage rate. So the cash outlay was minute.

 

This I believe created your block system and the famous 40 acre (1/4 mile by 1/4 mile) land unit.