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 the tunnel became part of the London Underground system, and remains in use today, originally as part of the East London Line now incorporated into the London Overground. Brunel is perhaps best remembered for designs for the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. The bridge was built to designs based on Brunel's, but with significant changes. Spanning over , and nominally above the River Avon, it had the longest span of any bridge in the world at the time of construction. Brunel submitted four designs to a committee headed by Thomas Telford, but Telford rejected all entries, proposing his own design