Enough has been said to show that these machines were thoroughly modern in their conception and constituted a complete range of tools, _each performing its part in a definite series of operations_. By this machinery ten unskilled men did the work of 110 skilled workmen. When the plant was in full running order in 1808 the output was over 130,000 blocks per year, with a value of over $250,000, an output greater than that previously supplied by the six largest dockyards. It continued for many years to supply all the blocks used by the Royal Navy, and was in fact superseded only when wooden blocks themselves largely made way for iron and steel ones. Brunel devised other woodworking tools, but none so successful as these. He started a mill at Battersea which burned down; his finances became involved and he was thrown into prison for debt. He was freed through a grant of $25,000 which friends secured from the government. His later work was in the field of civil engineering--the most famous work being the Thames tunnel. He was given the Legion of Honor in 1829, was knighted in 1841, and died in 1849.[30] [30] For fuller information, see the biography of Sir Marc Isambard Brunel by Richard Beamish, F.R.S. London, 1862. His son, Sir Isambard K. Brunel, was also one of the foremost engineers of England, a bridge and ship builder, railway engineer and rival of Robert Stephenson. At the age of twenty-seven he was chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, and built the steamer “Great Western” to run from Bristol to New York as an extension of that railway system. This was the first large iron ship, the first regular transatlantic liner, and the first large steamship using the screw propeller. Its success led to the building of the “Great Eastern” from his designs. This ship was about 700 feet long and for nearly fifty years was the largest one built. She was a disastrous failure financially and after a varied career, which included the laying of the first transatlantic cable, she was finally broken up. Brunel was a strong advocate of the broad gauge and built the Great Western system with a 7-foot gauge, which was ultimately changed to standard gauge. While a number of his undertakings were failures financially, his chief fault seems to have been that he was in advance of his generation. CHAPTER IV HENRY MAUDSLAY We have mentioned Henry Maudslay frequently. In fact, it is hard to go far in any historical study of machine tools without doing so.[31] [31] For best accounts of Maudslay, see Smiles’ “Industrial Biography,” Chap. XII, and “Autobiography of James Nasmyth.”