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
Isambard Kingdom Brunel Box Tunnel may have been deliberately aligned so that the rising sun shines all the way through it on Brunel's birthday. The initial group of locomotives ordered by Brunel to his own specifications proved unsatisfactory, apart from the North Star locomotive, and 20-year-old Daniel Gooch (later Sir Daniel) was appointed as Superintendent of Locomotive Engines. Brunel and Gooch chose to locate their locomotive works at the village of Swindon, at the point where the gradual ascent from London turned into the steeper descent to the Avon valley at Bath. Brunel's achievements ignited the imagination of the technically minded Britons of