Zerah Colburn (locomotive designer) to England to take up a job as editor of "The Engineer", Britain’s leading weekly technical journal. In this position, Colburn made friends with members of the Institutions of Civil and Mechanical Engineers and became a member of both. He gave frequent lectures and contributed at meetings. It is almost certain that while in London Colburn met Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In 1860, Colburn returned to America on the maiden voyage of the "Great Eastern", Brunel's leviathan steamship. In America he launched a new weekly engineering newspaper, "The Engineer", but this lasted only a few months and Colburn returned to England
Isambard Kingdom Brunel fifty-two years earlier by Tom Rolt in his 1959 book "Brunel." Re-engineering of suspension chains recovered from an earlier suspension bridge was one of many reasons given why Brunel's design could not be followed exactly. Hungerford Bridge, a suspension footbridge across the Thames near Charing Cross Station in London, was opened in May 1845. Its central span was , and its cost was £106,000. It was replaced by a new railway bridge in 1859, and the suspension chains were used to complete the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The Clifton Suspension Bridge still stands, and over 4 million vehicles traverse it every