Il Thames Tunnel di Marc Isambard Brunel. Una storia disegnata a Firenze nel 1828

The Thames Tunnel of London, a dramatic engineering masterpiece of the 19th century England, was started in 1825 and ended in 1845, by using the new technology of a tunneling shield invented and patented by Marc Isambard Brunel and Thomas Cochrane. In the direction of the works some years later the son of Marc, Kingdom Isambard Brunel, was appointed as Resident Engineer. He was severely injured when the tunnel was flooded on 12 January 1828, and six men died; but he continued the direction of the work till its inauguration. To the tunnel many newspapers dedicated articles and pictures. Of major significance, and witness of the international interest to this engineering work, appears the lithography printed in 1828 by the Florentine Teofilo Salucci on a drafting of Pietro Massai. In this large lithography (345 x 480 mm) ten “Tables” describe with great accuracy the plan and the section of the tunnel, but also the Marc Brunel technology adopted.