READING
Read the article about a British engineer.
Five
sentences have been removed.
Which sentence
(A–F) fits each gap (1–5)?
There is one extra
sentence you do not need to use.
(20 marks)
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
In surveys to find out who the most important Britons
of all
time are, Isambard Kingdom Brunel often comes out
on top.
This famous engineer was noted for the creation
of the
Great Western Railway and a series of famous
steamships.
The son of noted engineer Sir Marc Isambard Brunel,
Isambard K. Brunel was born in Portsmouth, England on
April 9, 1806.
His father was working there on the
block-making machinery of
the Portsmouth Block Mills. The
young Brunel was sent to
France to be educated at the
College of Caen in Normandy and
the Lycée Henri-Quatre in
Paris. He rose to prominence
when, at 20 years-old, he was
appointed as the resident
engineer of the Thames Tunnel,
his father’s greatest
achievement. The first of its kind ever
built, Isambard
spent nearly two years trying to drive the
horizontal
shaft from one end of it to the other. (–––– 1 ––––)
In the meantime, Brunel moved on. In 1833, he was
appointed engineer of the Great Western Railway, one
of
the wonders of Victorian Britain. Running from London
to
Bristol (and a few years later, to Exeter), the Great
Western
contained a series of impressive achievements,
such as
viaducts, stations, and tunnels, that ignited the
imagination of the technically-minded Britons of the age.
Brunel soon became one of the most famous men in Britain.
(–––– 2 ––––) He used his prestige to convince his railway
company employers to build the Great Western, at the time
by
far the largest steamship in the world. It first sailed in
1837. The
Great Britain followed in 1843, and was the first
of its kind to
cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Building on these successes, Brunel turned to a third ship
in
1852, even larger than both of its predecessors. The Great
Eastern was cutting-edge technology for its time — it was
the
largest ship ever built until the RMS Lusitania launched
in 1906
— and it soon ran over budget and schedule in the
face of a
series of difficult technical problems. The ship is
widely perceived
as a waste of money. (–––– 3 ––––)
Besides the railway and steamships, he was also involved in
the
construction of several lengthy bridges, including the
Royal Albert Bridge
near Plymouth, and an unusual
telescopic bridge in Bridgwater. He also
designed the
Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol but did not live to see
it
constructed. (–––– 4 ––––) Work started in 1862 and was
complete
by 1864, five years after Brunel’s death.
In 1843, while performing a conjuring trick for
the
amusement of his children, he accidentally swallowed
a
coin which became lodged in his throat. (–––– 5 ––––)
Eventually, at the suggestion of his father, Sir Marc,
Isambard
was strapped to a board and turned upside-down,
and the coin
was jerked free.
Brunel suffered a stroke in 1859, just before the Great
Eastern made
its first voyage to New York. He died ten days
later and is buried, like
his father, at Kensal Green Cemetery
in London. His son, Henri Marc
Brunel, also enjoyed some
success as a civil engineer.
1. ----------
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