Brunel's steamship the SS Great Britain is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull and screw propeller, becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was an English civil and marine engineer considered "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution", "perhaps the most eminent Victorian engineer", and one whose work "altered the lives of almost every person in Britain, and millions abroad". The first engineer of…