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 were not always successful, they often contained innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. During his career, Brunel achieved many engineering firsts, including assisting in the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river and development of , the first propeller-driven, ocean-going, iron ship, which, when built in 1843, was the largest ship ever built. Brunel set the standard for a well-built railway, using careful surveys to minimise gradients and curves. This necessitated expensive construction techniques, new bridges, new viaducts, and the long Box Tunnel. One controversial feature was the wide gauge, a "broad gauge" of , instead of what