Today in Technology History

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April 25

This portrait shows Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849) with a background view of his Thames Tunnel.Two weeks ago, we told you the story of the great English engineer Isambard Brunel. Today, we focus on his father, Marc Isambard Brunel, who was born on April 25, 1769.

The elder Brunel was born in France. He studied engineering and served in the French navy. When the French Revolution broke out he moved to America, where he became chief engineer of New York City and worked on a number of military projects. He won the contest to design the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., but his plans were set aside as too expensive.

After six years in the U.S., he moved to England, where he invented machines for making boots, sawing wood and building pulleys. Business ventures related to those inventions were only mildly successful, and Brunel spent months in debtor's prison.

However, he earned immortal recognition for one great accomplishment: building history's first underwater tunnel. In 1825, work began on a tunnel Brunel designed under the Thames River in London. The project depended upon an innovative "tunneling shield" Brunel invented to keep the tunnel intact as dozens of miners scooped out soft dirt.

The work was slow, smelly and dangerous. Cave-ins and floods killed workers, and construction once halted for seven years. Brunel heroically persevered, and he was knighted in 1841 when it became clear the tunnel would be completed.

The tunnel finally opened in 1843, nearly two decades after construction started. Brunel died six years later, at the age of eighty; his tunnel is still used today.

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