Why Isambard Kingdom Brunel Would Have Hated the Modovolo Lift

3,000,000 rivets.
30,000 iron plates.

That’s how many rivets and plates held together The Great Eastern, the world’s largest ship in 1858. And it was “largest” by a lot. Six times larger than any ship afloat at the time. And at 8,000 horsepower, it had more than eight times the power. The scale was so immense that it would be almost 50 years before anything surpassed its size and power.

And in some ways it has never been surpassed. It could go all the way from Britain to Australia in one shot with no refueling. This is not something that even a modern cargo ship can do. And, as you’ve likely already surmised, The Great Eastern was the brain-child of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the most bad-ass engineers you've never heard of.

 

 

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, standing in front of the launching chains of The Great Eastern. Photographed by Robert Howlett in 1857. Archived by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

Isambard had a habit of over-engineering the heck out of everything he made — a habit that would often get him into trouble as often as it made him successful.

The Great Eastern is a case in point. Because it was so large and no one had ever built anything like it before, it meant that there were many design changes needed throughout its construction, many of which added a lot of weight and complexity.

 

 

Men at work next to the launching chains of The Great Eastern. Photographed by Robert Howlett in 1857. Archived by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

 

So when it was time to launch The Great Eastern, it didn’t.

Launch, that is.

It sat stubbornly in its dry dock for months resisting every attempt to move it into the water — until Isambard finally engaged dozens of ship-building firms and engineering firms to lend him hydraulic rams, massive chains, and other equipment to push it unwillingly into the water.

And it turns out, The Great Eastern was also unwilling to make money. Once completed, it was sold for less than 33% of what it cost to build. And on its maiden voyage there were only 35 paying passengers out of a potential 1,000.

Eventually, there was a happy ending. Sort of. The Great Eastern found work as a work ship, laying the first functional cables between the UK and the US. Sadly, she ended her career floating in the Thames as a gigantic billboard for a department store.

The Great Eastern wasn’t the only time that Isambard went nuts for big, heavy, and expensive. These were Isambard’s favorite things across all of his projects.

And that’s why Isambard wouldn’t have been a fan of the Modovolo Lift. The Lift is everything that The Great Eastern and other Isambard projects are not: super light and an order of magnitude less expensive than anything on the market. At just 118 parts, including screws and wires, it has far fewer parts than most other drones in the same category, often comprised of 1,000+ parts.

So Isambard would have likely been a DJI or Skydio engineer.

But they do have one thing in common. The Great Eastern could hold an enormous amount of coal and other cargo. And so can the Modovolo Lift. With its modular payload-centric design, the Lift has nearly 4x more payload capacity than other drones in the same category (e.g., DJI Matrice 300 and 400). In other words, it’s the kind of machine even Isambard might’ve admired — once he got over the lack of rivets.