Having produced the greatest inventors, playwrights, authors, poets, sportsmen, comedians etc etc, our average is good enough for you lot!
I respectfully disagree. Inventors - I.K. Brunel - Portsmouth (Down south) Playwrights - William Shakespeare - Stratford on avon (Warwickshire, close to oxfordshire) Authors - William Golding - Cornwall (south) Poets - Philip Larkin - Coventry (the midlands) Sportsman - Do we have any greats? Comedians - Again, do we have any greats?
He invented some stuff. First ocean liner to use a propellor/screw (SS Great Britain), first iron ship (Also the SS great Britain)
Jimmy Greaves Steve Redgrave Nick Faldo Barry Sheene Ronnie Barker John Cleese Peter Sellers Peter Cook Ben Elton
1350–1400; < Old French engigneor < Medieval Latin ingeniātor, derivative of ingeniāre to design, devise (v. derivative of ingenium)] To devise or contrive, not that far, if any distance at all, from to invent. Brunel was a great engineer/inventor, OK he sometimes over designed things and had occasionally failures/partial failures but he did it all with out design codes. We still have failures with design codes. He did much of his designing on the hoof which was not ideal for health and safety, one famous story reports a nurse in a hospital accosting him during the construction of one of the tunnels on the Great Western Mainline. She said 'Sir, so far this year we have had 132 of your man in this hospital either dead or with serious injuries'. He stopped and thought for a few seconds before replying, 'that's not too bad is it?' It wouldn't go down well nowadays as we have moved on but without this man we would have been stuck in the dark ages. A great man willing to push the boundaries.
I got banned from an anti-Man Utd group on Yahoo way back when because some Man Utd fan who was in the group (obviously not that bright) sent me an abusive e-mail which started with the Wildean repost of "**** off ******", then he brought it up on the group to try and score points, and when I ripped him to shreds one of the mods stepped in demanding I apologise for insulting another member so I told him to go **** himself - then had to tell him to go **** himself a second time when he said I'd be banned from the group if I didn't apologise for telling this self-****ee to go **** himself...
At least HIAG can name a few more boards he's banned from now. I hope he has enough paper to write all the boards down
As much as I admire Brunel, the fact is that he wasn't an inventor - he merely adapted or developed existing technologies, rather than creating new ones. For example, the SS Great Britain may have been the first iron-hulled ship to cross the Atlantic, but the only new thing about it was what the hull was made of. The ship's design was identical to any Transatlantic wooden ship of that period, indeed the SS Great Britain was designed as a wooden ship that was to use the standard paddle propulsion system that had also been used on Brunel's previous ship, the SS Great Western.
Sorry, but the fact is, the first thing he did was invent and patent a Tunnelling Shield to protect workers from cave-ins on his first job the Thames Tunnel. And how would you describe the fact he was the first bloke to build a propeller driven ship the Great Britain, who did he copy that off? all before were paddle. Your description of the ship is horribly wrong, http://ssgreatbritain.org/story/timeline ...even Wiki's got it right! Where on earth did you get that claptrap from?
He also invented an air propulsion system for his Great Western Railway plus all manner of minor inventions. He managed to save his own life through his quick thinking. A fish bone stuck in his throat threatening to choke him he had himself strapped to a round table which was then spun around ejecting the bone by centrifugal force. An extremely inventive engineer.
SS Archimedes was the first screw-propelled steamship, which was launched whilst the SS Great Britain whilst the SS Great Britain was still being designed. Brunel went as far as to borrow the Archimedes to perform tests on it's screw propulsion system, before changing the design - with the paddle wheels half built. Similarly, iron-hulled ships existed whilst the SS Great Britain was at the design stage, and Brunel was converted to the material after seeing a iron-hulled channel packet steamer and sending his associates to experience it. It's all here, if you bothered looking. Oh, and it's also all on Wikipedia, although that crack of yours says that you didn't even bother to check...
I know you two like to knock seven bells out of each other but this is a non argument HBIC, if you want to know the full story of the man read the Biography by LTC Rolt. Brunel's inventions were numerous.
Brunel comes across very Laurence Llewelyn- Bowen to me. A flamboyant dandy with lavish, expensive, crackpot ideas, which surprisingly came off once in a while.
Right family, wrong member. It was invented and patented by his father, Marc Isambard Brunel, in 1818 - when IKB was eleven years old. The system was invented by Jacob and Joseph Samuda in 1838. Brunel's system was opened in 1848 - yet there were systems operating in Galway (1844) and Croydon (1846) by this time.
