Product Description

The first underwater tunnel (Thames), the longest suspension bridge (Clifton), the greatest railway system (Great Western), the fastest locomotive, the biggest warship, the first transatlantic steamboat...These are the works of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Victorian engineer extraordinaire and the last engineering giant of the Industrial Revolution. The inventions of Brunel and other pioneering engineers of the time ensured that Britain was the hub of the industrial world. As well as Brunel's, there were other pioneering engineers of the time including Stevenson who managed to float a railway across a bog and Telford who, with no formal training, went on to build some of the finest canals and bridges in the country. This book is an illustrated record of some of the greatest engineering feats of the Industrial Revolution and includes blueprints, engravings, letters and diary extracts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #346849 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

About the Author
Sally Dugan is a writer and teacher with a special interest in the Victorian era. She has written several other books including The Day the World Took Off and Commando.

Customer Reviews

Oh dear!
There must be a place in the world for books like this but I am not sure where. Let us look at the positive points. First, it has quite a lot of nice pictures, some of which are quite rare. Second, the style is quite pleasantly relaxed 'easy reading'.

The latter virtue unfortunately makes the book's vices all the more apparent. As far as one can see, research consists of reading half a dozen published sources (most of which are readily available popular engineering histories) and some cozy chats with a friend who is a railway historian plus an interview with a professor of civil engineering partly responsible for the Millenum Bridge.

The railway historian is the saviour of the book. He is widely quoted in an informal conversational style and has obviously reflected long and deeply on Brunel's achievement and life (incidentally, the 'Stephenson' in the title is misleading: I do not think that a single incident in Stephenson's life is mentioned that does not have at least some connection with Brunel). A book by him on the subject might well be very interesting.

There is of course a little interpretation by the author where her sources conflict - but only a little. For example, on the matter of whether John Scott Russell (who undeniably built the Great Eastern)was an honest man hard done by or a crook: Rolt, Brunel's hagiographer, comes down firmly in favour of the 'crook' theory. Later revisionist theory tends to the view that Brunel was a difficult and interfering man playing in a field that he did not fully understand and with a tremendous sense of his own importance: Russell was a clever and honest man doing his best in impossible circumstances. To reconcile these views we get little more than 'There is probably a degree of truth in both.' This may well be the case, but if we are to have a compromise, surely we might have something more closely argued than a small dollop of soothing goop.

This account is basically hagiographic with an eye to the revisionists. In another of her rare attempts at original interpretation, the author attempts to salvage something from the 'atmospheric railway' debacle by suggesting that it may once again see the light of day in the quest for new fuels. Up to that point I had had niggling doubts about whether the author actually had a sound grasp of the engineering principles involved. My niggles turned to certainties. The logical successor of the atmospheric railway is the electric railway: in both fuel is burned remotely and transmitted to the train by a conduit (wire, pipe, third rail, X-ray laser ....). Should the atmospheric ever come back into vogue (an unlikely event), it will quite certainly not be because the fuel used to generate the power has changed.

This brings me back to my starting point - it is difficult to see where this book belongs. I found it an irritating waste of money - quite apart from the fact that I was expecting some sort of serious comparison between Stephenson and Brunel. I would hesitate to give it to a child: it skirts engineering error too closely to be a safe educational device. I suppose my grandmother might have liked it.

A great introduction to the subject
I think this book is a valuable resource as an introduction to the subject. The writing style is accomplished and succinct, allowing a thorough and evocative introduction to the characters and ideas of the time. The error that another customer pointed out was the kind of nitpicking detail that only an academic would be concerned with, and would not have any impact on a reader who was trying to get an overview of the time.
This is not claiming to be an academic thesis, but is designed to get readers engaged with the period, which is exactly what it does.