BBC - h2g2 Brunel, Father and Son - British Engineering Genius bbc.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bbc.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The great Victorian engineer was born on 9th April, 1806.
The greatest of the great Victorian engineers, and their most outstanding personality, was born at five minutes before one o’clock in the morning in a small house in the district of Portsea in Portsmouth. He was the son of a French émigré, Marc Isambard Brunel, a prolific inventor and engineer, and his English wife Sophia Kingdom. They already had two daughters, Sophia and Emma. The new baby was their last child and only son.
Marc Isambard Brunel had first met Sophia Kingdom in Rouen in 1792. The youngest of sixteen children of a naval contractor in Plymouth, she had been sent to France in her teens to learn the language. They fell in love, but Brunel was a known royalist and the following year he had to flee France from the Terror. He took ship for the United States and was eventually appointed chief engineer of New York City. Sophia meanwhile had managed to get back to England after being imprisoned in a convent. In 17