Isambard Kingdom Brunel	Launch of the Great Eastern, 1858

By 1800, the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars put an end to most government-sponsored research and education in naval architecture.  Great Britain became the undisputed maritime and industrial power, and its engineers used their new-found scientific knowledge to help them solve the practical problems.  The author’s next book, tentatively titled Bridging the Seas: The Development of Naval Architecture in the Industrial Age, 1800-2000, will pick up the story at that point, describing how the science of ship design was transformed into a practical tool that helped naval architects, using the iron and steam, to design bigger and faster ships, overcoming the uncertainties of these new technologies.  At the center of this story lies Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the construction of the Great Eastern, a ship that was ahead of its time, but which inspired the engineer William Froude to investigate ship theory and to develop the experimental methods that brought naval architecture into the modern age.