Sweat and Inspiration: Pioneers of the Industrial Age

This is the story of the early nineteenth century engineers, who within only two generations turned Britain from a pastoral into an industrial country and opened the way for the rest of the world to do the same. In 1800 America had not yet had time to tap the vast resources that would one day make her the strongest nation on earth. For most of the nineteenth century that position was held by Britain, thanks to engineers like Richard Trevithick, whose steam carriage of 1801 made the first ever journey by mechanical propulsion in the history of man; or Isambard Brunel whose steamships took over from sail as George and Robert Stephenson's railroad locomotives took over from the horse. Between them they laid the basis for the kind of man-made environment we all take for granted around us today. Though they each have had their own biographies, not til now has their story been told as a whole - a dramatic saga interweaving their turbulent lives and careers, the events unfolding in the order they happened in a fast moving narrative, a story that changed the world.