Isambard Kingdom Brunel
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
I was born in Bristol and he was a large part of the city's heritage and featured in the school curriculum. I have an early memory of standing on the edge of the Avon watching the SS Great Britain come under the suspension bridge into the Cumberland Basin in around 1970.
Funnily enough, I visited the ship again just the other weekend for the first time in about 30 years. It is only apparent to me now just how advanced the ship was at the time. This was the very first iron-only ocean-going liner and even the use of a propeller was bleeding-edge when it was built, and yet some the techniques used were similar to what you might see now. If you're ever in the area, I really recommend a visit.
Also worth mentioning is Maidenhead Railway Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Railway_Bridge
built in 1838, which held the record for the longest flattest brick arches in the world up until only quite recently I believe. It appears in Turner's famous painting "Rain, Steam, Speed" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rain_Steam_and_Speed_the_...
and also has a fantastic sounding echo underneath.
Such an utterly wonderful piece of engineering, the combination of so many advances from it's iron construction to its rotary screw propeller.
(The story goes the bridge was opened but its extreme flatness disturbed the locals, whom forced him to put the wooden supporting arches used during construction back under it, fearing it would surely collapse. He did so and the supports remained there for some time. It wasn't until he was he was allowed to take them down again that he revealed that they were put back without touching the bridge; it had been freestanding since being opened. What a champion!)
http://www.justmomentsintime.com.au/BaileySite/Terrys%20Page...
For added interest - the white building is one of only two working camera obscuras in the country and the bridge is over Avon Gorge. If you hear of "Silicon Gorge", now you know what it looks like!
At about the time the SS Great Britain was being repatriated, Concorde was undergoing its initial test flights. We saw an early one take off from Filton from across the Bristol Channel in Wales. In those days, it was allowed to do sonic booms as it flew along the Welsh coast. Bloody hell it was loud!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKqdlpuLDPE
Brunel is also a character in the brilliant "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage":
http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/cast/
Where his described as:
"The Wolverine of the mid-Victorians, he was short, ripped, had big sideburns, smoked forty cigars a day and generally kicked everyone’s ass."
http://transportationist.org/2012/09/17/great_isambard_kingd...
"It is mostly about Brunel, but it is also telling of the state of the UK in the early 1970s. Something was clearly wrong that this was green-lighted."
What is even stranger is that it won an oscar in 1976.
Its definitely worth watching if you can find it.
I didn't find that film, but I found this film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXgGsEO1b04
Which, for a condensed, half-witty animation, does a fair job of putting such a life into 3 minutes.
The best I found on the Oscar winning film are some clips: http://0xdb.org/0073068/clips/position . From the clips, I would describe it as a cross between the animations of Monty Python's Flying Circus and Yellow Submarine.
And those clips worked best in Firefox, click a frame and wait for no feedback, and then 5 seconds will play (with audio) when you least expect it.