Isambard Kingdom Brunel Brunel's achievements as an engineer. The 2013 album "The Last Ship" by Sting includes the song "Ballad of the Great Eastern". Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859), was an English mechanical and civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", "one of the 19th-century engineering giants", and "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, [who] changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions". Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the
Marc Isambard Brunel over £17,000. Brunel was a talented mechanical engineer, and did much to develop sawmill machinery, undertaking contracts for the British Government at Chatham and Woolwich dockyards, building on his experience at the Portsmouth Block Mills. He built a sawmill at Battersea, London (burnt down in 1814 and rebuilt by 1816), which was designed to produce veneers, and he also designed sawmills for entrepreneurs. He also developed machinery for mass-producing soldiers' boots, but before this could reach full production, demand ceased due to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Brunel was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1814. In