Marc Brunel, French Engineer
Marc Isambard Brunel (April 25, 1769 - December 12, 1849) was a French Engineer. In 1796 he was appointed Chief Engineer of the city of New York. He designed houses, docks, commercial buildings, an arsenal, and a cannon factory. In 1798 he moved to London with a design for a machine that would automate the production of pulley blocks. In 1818 he patented a tunneling shield; a reinforced shield of cast iron in which miners would work in separate compartments, digging at the tunnel-face. His greatest achievement was the Thames Tunnel, an underwater tunnel, built beneath the River Thames connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping. It measures 35 feet wide by 20 feet high and is 1,300 feet long, running at a depth of 75 feet below the river's surface. It was the first tunnel known successfully to have been constructed underneath a navigable river, and was built between 1825 and 1843. In 1845 he suffered a severe stroke and was paralyzed on his right side. He died in 1849 at the age of 80.
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