Brunel remained in America for over five years and was naturalized as a citizen in 1796. During this time he was engaged on the Hudson-Champlain canal and various river improvements. He was a friend of Major L’Enfant, who planned the city of Washington and he submitted one of the competitive designs for the original Capitol. He also designed and built the old Park Theater in New York, which was burned in 1821. He was appointed chief engineer of New York, built a cannon foundry and had a part in planning the fortifications of the Narrows in New York harbor. He was gay, refined and a favorite among the emigrés who enlivened New York society in the closing years of the eighteenth century. It was at Alexander Hamilton’s dinner table that the first suggestion of the block machinery came to him. He had been invited to meet a M. Delabigarre, who had just arrived from England. M. Delabigarre had been describing the method of making ship’s blocks and spoke of their high and increasing cost. Brunei listened with attention and then pointed out what he considered the defects of the method and suggested that the mortises might be cut by machinery, two or three at a time. The shaping machine he afterward used was conceived while he was at Fort Montgomery in the highlands of the Hudson. Brunel left America for England early in 1799 and remained in England the rest of his life. His marriage soon after his arrival to Miss Kingdom, the girl whom he had met at Rouen, doubtless gives the reason for this change. Two months after reaching England, he took out a patent for a writing and duplicating machine and he also invented a machine for twisting cotton thread. Meantime he was working on the drawings for a complete set of block machinery, and by 1801 he had made a working model of the mortising and boring machines. He offered his plans to Fox & Taylor, who held the navy contract for blocks. Mr. Taylor wrote in reply that his father had spent many years developing their existing methods of manufacture and they were perfectly satisfied with them. He added, “I have no hope of anything better ever being discovered, and I am convinced there cannot.” Brunel, through introductions brought from America, then laid his plans before Lord Spencer, of the Admiralty, and Sir Samuel Bentham. Bentham, as we have seen, was already working on the same problem. He saw at once the superiority of Brunel’s plans and, with the freedom from jealousy and self-interest which characterized his whole career, he recommended their adoption, with the result that Brunel was commissioned to build and install his machines.