Kirkaldy Testing Museum

The Kirkaldy Testing Museum is housed in a facility formerly owned by David Kirkaldy. The highlight of the exhibit is the enormous unique hydraulic universal test machine that Kirkaldy designed and built in Leeds. It is displayed in full working order in the rooms that Kirkaldy has built to house it. The machine is 14.5 m long and weighs 118 tons. In addition, there are also many smaller, more modern machines.

The activities of David Kirkaldy's facility at Southwark 99 allowed us to set international standards in testing materials that are used up to the present day. From 1843, Kirkaldy worked for the shipbuilding company Napier. He left his job in 1861 and spent the next two and a half years studying the mechanical testing methods that existed at the time, then designed his own test machine, which turned out to be revolutionary.