Brunel Museum with a fairly modest exposure helps to understand how the United Kingdom in the XIX century became the technological leader of the world: the country is valued and treasured its engineers.

Marc Brunel in fact a Frenchman, forced to flee France during the Revolution because of his royalist views. For a while he worked in America, where by chance (during lunch) heard about the difficulties faced by the British Royal Navy with equipment pulley - blocks for tackle. In the year the fleet needed 100 thousand units, each done by hand. Bruyneel offered Admiralty machine that accelerates the process tenfold. Thus began his career in Britain.

Bruyneel made many inventions, but the businessman got out no: he was heavily in debt, and even sat in a debtor's prison. That's when he began a correspondence with the Emperor Alexander I about the possible departure to Russia (engineer offered to build a tunnel under the Neva). Once it became known that the UK could lose such a professional, the government has paid the debts of Brunel on the condition that he forgets to think about Russia.

Brunel was the greatest project of the tunnel under the Thames - the first in the world under a navigable river. In 1818, the engineer and his partner, Admiral Sir Thomas Cochran, a brilliant invention patented - tunneling shield. With it to 1843 under the bed of the Thames tunnel was laid 396 meters long, 11 meters wide and 6 meters high. It was arranged lighting, paved roads. Coaches on them, however, never went, but there was plenty of pedestrians: the construction has been in vogue in the year it is visited by two million people. Now Thames Tunnel - part of the London Underground.

The museum is located in a small historic building, which used steam engines were continuously pumped out of the water tunnel. Here, a plurality of exhibits, telling about the work of Sir Marc Brunel and his son, a prominent engineer Brunel Isambara (he created a giant steamer "Great Eastern", through which laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable). The museum features drawings made Bruyneel Sr., prints and photographs, models of bridges and other structures.

But the interesting thing here - an opportunity to visit the underground chamber of the tunnel. Intrepid visitors enter into it through a tiny door where crawls, bent. Now - on the descent is not too robust-looking stairs. Underground space is huge. The guide in the gloom about the life of Sir Marc Brunel, who could build a tunnel under the Neva - if England had not proved to be so far-sighted.