Upon the return of Archimedes to England, Smith agreed to loan Archimedes for several months to the Great Western Steamship Company, which was in the process of constructing the world's largest steamship, the SS Great Britain. Great Western's principal engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, took advantage of the loan to test Archimedes with a variety of different propellers in an attempt to find the most efficient design, which was eventually determined to be a new four-bladed model submitted by Smith.