Welcome to History's Not Boring by kidopoly.com. I'm Mira. And I'm Finn. Before we start, we have a very special listener request today from Neo, who is eight years old.
SPEAKER_00Hi Neo! Neo lives in Bristol, England, and that is actually the perfect place for today's episode. Because the guy we're talking about built some of his absolute greatest and most famous works right in Neo's home city.
SPEAKER_01That's right! Picture a guy who helped dig the very first tunnel under a poop-filled river, built a railway tunnel so perfectly straight that the sun shines through it on his birthday, and designed an iron ship that could hold 4,000 passengers.
SPEAKER_00That is literally like a giant floating town. How could a ship that huge even move? We'll get to that.
SPEAKER_01And he did all of this while wearing a massive, eight-inch-tall hat, just to look a little taller. Today, we are travelling back to the early 1800s to meet Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the brilliant engineer who built the modern world out of iron and steam.
SPEAKER_00Wait, his name was Isambard Kingdom Brunel? That sounds like a powerful wizard's name from a fantasy movie.
SPEAKER_01It is definitely one of the coolest names in all of history. Isambard was born in Portsmouth, England, on April 9, 1806, right when the Industrial Revolution was kicking into high gear. People were suddenly building massive machines using iron and steam power.
SPEAKER_00What did he look like? Did he have a massive wizard beard to match the epic name?
SPEAKER_01No beard, but he had a very famous look. Isambard was actually pretty short, only about five feet two inches tall. He was really insecure about his height, so he wore a massive black stovepipe hat that was eight inches tall, just to look taller and more imposing.
SPEAKER_00Eight inches? That's taller than my tablet. Did it blow off when it was windy outside?
SPEAKER_01He managed to keep it on. He even wrote in his private diary about his height. He said, I catch myself trying to look big on my little pony. But even if he was short, his brain was absolutely huge. His dad, Mark Brunel, was also an inventor. Mark designed a giant metal tunnelling shield that was actually inspired by a tiny wood-eating shipworm.
SPEAKER_00A shipworm? That sounds disgusting. What did they use the shield for? To dig right under the River Thames in London.
SPEAKER_01Back then, the river was basically a giant open sewer. It was full of raw sewage and smelled absolutely terrible. In 1825, Isambard helped his dad dig a tunnel underneath it. It was the first time anyone had ever tunnelled under a navigable river, and it was incredibly dangerous work.
SPEAKER_00Did the poop water ever break through the ceiling? I feel like that would be a disaster.
SPEAKER_01It did! In 1828, when Isambard was 21 years old, the river burst into the tunnel. A massive wall of freezing, filthy water rushed in. Six workers tragically drowned in the dark, and Isambard was badly injured. He was washed up the tunnel shaft and almost died himself.
SPEAKER_00Whoa, that is a seriously close call. I bet he never wanted to look at a dark tunnel ever again after surviving that.
SPEAKER_01Actually, he did the exact opposite. He fearlessly went on to build the Great Western Railway, an epic train line connecting London all the way to Neo City of Bristol.
SPEAKER_00No way! Did the trains go super fast? I love fast trains.
SPEAKER_01For the time, yes. They used broad gauge tracks, which were wider than normal, so the trains could reach 60 miles per hour. That was mind-blowing for people back in the 1830s. But to get those tracks to Bristol, he had to cut straight through a massive obstacle called Box Hill.
SPEAKER_00How do you put a train through a giant hill? Do you just lay the tracks over the top?
SPEAKER_01Nope. Brunel decided to go right through the middle. He designed the Box Tunnel. It was 1.83 miles long, or 9,636 feet. It was the longest railway tunnel in the world at the time.
SPEAKER_00Almost two miles underground, in the dark, with early trains. That sounds absolutely terrifying. It was extremely hard work.
SPEAKER_014,000 construction workers, called navvies, had to dig it out by hand using pickaxes and shovels. To break through the hard rock, they used one ton of explosive gunpowder and one ton of candles every single week just to see in the dark.
SPEAKER_00A ton of candles? That's 2,000 pounds of wax a week. The fumes must have been crazy. Exactly!
SPEAKER_01They worked from six deep vertical shafts and used over 30 million individual bricks to line the tunnel walls. And the craziest part? The tunnel is so perfectly straight that there is a famous magical legend about it.
SPEAKER_00A magical legend? Is it haunted by the ghost of a giant candle?
SPEAKER_01No ghosts. The legend says that Brunel calculated the angle so perfectly that every year, on his exact birthday, April 9th, the rising sun shines perfectly straight through the entire two-mile-long tunnel.
SPEAKER_00He aimed a two-mile tunnel at his own birthday sun. That is the biggest historical flex I have ever heard.
SPEAKER_01He absolutely loved doing impossible things. Next, he designed the incredible Clifton Suspension Bridge, right in Bristol. It stretches 1,352 feet across a huge canyon called the Avon Gorge.
SPEAKER_00How high up is the bridge? That sounds like a massive drop.
SPEAKER_01The road is 245 feet above the water at high tide. To give you an idea of that scale, if you stacked 25 tall elephants on top of each other, they would just barely reach the bottom of the bridge.
SPEAKER_00Whoa! I would be holding on so tight if I walked across that. Did he live to see it finally finished?
SPEAKER_01Sadly, no. The bridge was completely finished in 1864, a few years after he died, as a memorial to him. They even used heavy wrought iron chains from another one of his old bridges to build it. But by the 1850s, he was already busy building massive ships anyway.
SPEAKER_00Wait, he built ships too. Tunnels, bridges, railways, and ships. Were they as crazy as his tunnels?
SPEAKER_01Oh, even crazier! His earlier ships achieved his vision of taking passengers from London all the way to New York on one ticket. But he wanted a ship massive enough to reach Australia without refueling. So he built the SS Great Eastern, a colossal iron giant. How big was this iron giant? It was 692 feet long. That is longer than two American football fields placed end to end. It weighed nearly 19,000 tons and had enormous paddle wheels on the sides, plus a giant screw propeller in the back.
SPEAKER_00How many people could fit on that absolute monster of a ship?
SPEAKER_01It was designed to carry 4,000 passengers without ever needing to refuel on its way to Australia. It was so massively huge that no other ship in the entire world would be built larger than it for another 40 years.
SPEAKER_0040 years? It sounds like he was literally pulling designs from the future.
SPEAKER_01He really was. Even though the Great Eastern wasn't a huge financial success at carrying passengers because it was just too expensive to run, it ended up doing something even more important for human history. In 1866, it laid the very first lasting telegraph cable all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.
SPEAKER_00Wait, like the first internet cable, connecting America and Europe at the bottom of the sea. Exactly!
SPEAKER_01Because Brunel's giant ship was the only vessel big enough to carry thousands of miles of heavy iron cable, it physically connected the continents. Suddenly, people could send messages instantly, instead of waiting weeks for a boat to cross the ocean.
SPEAKER_00So the short guy with the huge 8-inch hat basically gave the world global texting. You could totally say that. Weird? I absolutely love weird facts. Lay it on me, Mira.
SPEAKER_01So, in 1843, Brunel was doing a magic trick to entertain some of his children. He pretended to swallow a real gold coin, called a half sovereign, and make it magically pull out of his ear.
SPEAKER_00No way! Don't tell me he accidentally swallowed it for real. He actually did.
SPEAKER_01The gold coin slipped back and got stuck right down in his windpipe. He was coughing terribly. Famous doctors tried to get it out with long metal forceps, but they completely failed. So, being a genius engineer, Brunel treated his own body like a machine.
SPEAKER_00What did he do? Did he invent a coin-sucking vacuum?
SPEAKER_01Close. He built a special wooden board mechanism, strapped himself to it, and had his friends spin him completely upside down so gravity could pull the coin out.
SPEAKER_00He even had them whack him on the back. He engineered an upside-down human spinning machine just to spit out a gold coin. Did it work?
SPEAKER_01Yes. It took weeks of trying, but eventually, while he was hanging completely upside down, the coin popped right out into his mouth. Alright, Finn, time for the quiz. Are you ready?
SPEAKER_00Okay, I'm ready. My brain is fired up and spinning like an upside-down engineer.
SPEAKER_01First question. What was the name of the huge, 8-inch tall hat that Brunel wore to look taller? Next one. What magical sounding event is said to happen on Brunel's birthday, April 9th, inside the Box Tunnel? Question 3. How long was the colossal iron ship called the SS Great Eastern? His number 4. What famous London River did Isambard and his father dig the very first underwater tunnel beneath? Last question. What weird, shiny object did Brunel accidentally swallow while performing a magic trick for children? Great job, let's see how you did. The first answer is he wore a black stovepipe hat. For question two, the rising sun shines perfectly straight through the entire two mile tunnel. Number three, the answer is it was 692 feet long. Question four. He dug beneath the poop-filled river Thames. And the final answer is he swallowed a gold coin or a half sovereign.
SPEAKER_00I am seriously still thinking about that gold coin trick. Imagine building a giant spinning board just to burp up your own money.
SPEAKER_01Right? Only Isambard Kingdom Brunel would solve a medical emergency with a giant spinning wooden machine. What an absolute legend.
SPEAKER_00Seriously! If you think Brunel's 8-inch hat and giant iron ships were as awesome as we do, please leave us a five-star review.
SPEAKER_01Yes, please do. Just scroll down on your podcast app and tap the five stars. It really helps other kids find the show. Oh, and don't forget to check out our site, kidopoly.com. We've got tons of fun learning games and history activities there.
SPEAKER_00It's awesome! And if you want your name on the show like Neo from Bristol, or just want to say hi, send us an email at hello at kidopoly.com. Thanks for exploring the age of iron and steam with us today, everyone. See you next time on History's Not Boring. Bye.