Today, we meet a remarkable father and son. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the
machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them. The British art historian Kenneth Clark
coined the term Heroic Materialism to describe the engineering
of the middle 19th century. Those engineers were melodramatic
artists in iron, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the grandest of
them all. His father, Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, was born in
France in 1769 and died in England in 1849. At first Marc
Brunel's work was part of the wave of building characteristic of
the Industrial Revolution. But he made his mark in the history
books with great works of civil engineering -- an early
suspension bridge, the first floating ship-landing platform, and
-- boldest of all -- a tunnel under the Thames river -- the
first construction of its kind, and one that required a whole
new set of The person he put in charge of the tunnel was his
20-year-old son. The tunnel was