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IK Brunel first came to public notice with his father Marc Isambard Brunel with their ambitious tunnel beneath the Thames. It is worth remembering that, when his son was born, Marc's block mill machinery installed at Portsmouth dockyard had already begun the age of mass-production using all-metal machine tools.

He helped to define the great transformations to industry and transport which made later engineers like Robert Stephenson and Isambard into the superstars of their age.

The Portsmouth Block Mills were a series of precision machine tools that remained serviceable for about 150 years. Sets of machines performed a sequence of some twenty separate operations to ensure a steady flow of components from raw materials to standardised assembly. They supplied 100,000 pulley blocks a year during the Napoleonic Wars. The chisels on the mortising machines made about 400 strokes a minute. (Other contemporary production machines, like Whitworth's, were for general purpose, single operations. ) Brunel200 is an initiative led by the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership which is responsible for a season of exhibitions, education programmes and celebrations. One of the aims of the partnership is to encourage people to appreciate the value of the achievements of IK Brunel and his nineteenth century colleagues, and to foster an interest in all aspects of engineering, science and design.

At the end of her essay, MacLeod suggests: 'The benefit to Bristol and the heritage industry may need to be set off against the damage possibly inflicted by this iconic image on recruitment into engineering careers and on the public engagement with science and technology.'

www.brunel200.com