19th-century Belgian engineers

Alfred Jules Belpaire (25 September 1820 – 27 January 1893) was a Belgian locomotive engineer who invented the square-topped Belpaire firebox in 1864.
Belpaire was born in Ostend, and first studied at the Athenaeum School in Antwerp. He then became a student at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, France from 1837 to 1840 where he obtained a degree in mechanical engineering.
Belpaire was then employed at the Belgian State Railways, where he worked as a mechanical engineer for more than 50 years. He was first director of the railway workshops at Mechelen and then from 1850 put in charge of all materials and based in Brussels. He first developed a firebox to burn poor quality coals and then around 1860 generalised his invention into a robust thermally efficient design which bears his name. His firebox was used in locomotives in his native Belgium and also then extensively in Britain, North America and around the world. The Belpaire firebox had an improved transfer of heat and steam production due to its greater surface area at the top. While attaching it to a boiler was more difficult due to its oblong shape, it had simpler interior bracing as an advantage.
Alfred Belpaire was one of the founders of the Congrès International des Chemins de Fer, of which he was president in 1891.He died in Schaerbeek, aged 72.

Henri-Alexis Brialmont (Venlo, 25 May 1821 – Brussels, 21 July 1903), nicknamed The Belgian Vauban after the French military architect, was a Belgian army officer, politician and writer of the 19th century, best known as a military architect and designer of fortifications. Brialmont qualified as an officer in the Belgian army engineers in 1843 and quickly rose up the ranks. He served as a staff officer, and later was given command of the district of the key port of Antwerp. He finished his careers as Inspector-General of the Army. Brialmont was also an active pamphleteer and political campaigner and lobbied through his career for reform and expansion of the Belgian military and was also involved in the foundation of the Congo Free State.
Today, Brialmont is best known for the fortifications which he designed in Belgium and Romania and would influence another in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The fortifications he designed in Belgium at the end of the 1880s around the towns of Liège, Namur and Antwerp would play an important role during the early stages of the German invasion of Belgium during World War I.