While not strictly related to science, this link takes you to a fantastic photo essay on the construction of the last of the great nineteenth-century steamships, The Great Eastern. It’s designer was a diminutive man of titanic vision and energy named Isambard Kingdom Brunel. I think we can all agree that his name belongs in the pantheon of great names. I love looking at these photos because they capture something essential about the period – it’s love of grandiosity. If we find ourselves in a historical moment obsessed with the minuscule (e.g. neutrinos, quarks, etc.), then the Victorian era was equally marked by their love of the impossibly large. Just look at these pictures and tell me that you wouldn’t have loved to stroll along the docks while this behemoth was under construction. One additional note: The Great Eastern was also the ship that laid the first Atlantic cable, essentially binding the Old and New worlds and allowing something resembling modern telecommunications to arise. We often forget that the first Atlantic telegraph cable represented something like time travel to the Victorians.
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/08/last-victorian-leviathan-ss-great.html