Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the son of Marc Isambard Brunel, a French engineer who escaped the revolutionary turmoil of France in 1793 by immigrating to the United States, where he became an American citizen and engineered several projects, including the Hudson-Champlain Canal. In 1799 Marc Brunel moved to England and married Sophia Kingdom, an Englishwoman who had begun corresponding with Brunel while she was imprisoned during the French Revolution.

Isambard Brunel was born in 1806 in Portsmouth, England. Demonstrating an early aptitude for mathematics, he was sent as a 14-year-old to college in France, where he studied and apprenticed in the design of mechanical instruments. At the age of 20 Brunel was appointed resident engineer of his father's Thames River Tunnel project, and it was during this early experience that Brunel's legendary resilience and flamboyance were first publicly realized. Brunel tenaciously overcame many obstacles, but the project, overwhelmed with mishaps, was aborted...