Charles Blacker Vignoles: Romantic Engineer

Charles Blacker Vignoles (1793-1875) has been somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries, the Stephensons, Brunel and Locke. Yet from 1825 to 1870, he was continually involved in the field of civil engineering in the UK, Ireland and overseas. Among his achievements were the Tudela and Bilbao Railway in northern Spain, and the suspension bridge spanning the River Dnieper at Kiev, Russia, which at the time of its completion was one of the largest bridges of its kind in the world. This account, originally published in 1982, is based on a close study of original records, including a large volume of correspondence as well as Vignoles’ extensive diaries in the British Library. The aim of the book is to put his engineering achievements into perspective in comparison with those of his contemporaries, and by drawing on his own account of himself to illuminate the personal background of one of the great pioneers of the Victorian age of civil engineering.