Kirkaldy Testing Museum

Kirkaldy was born in Dundee in 1820, and educated at Edinburgh University. He worked at Napier shipbuilding works from 1843, where he became Chief Draughtsman and Calculator. He left in 1861 and over the next two and a half years studied existing mechanical testing methods and designed his own testing machine. William Fairbairn had pioneered tensile strength measurement as well as assessing creep and fatigue on large structures as well as small. Entirely at his own expense, Kirkaldy commissioned his machine from the Leeds firm of Greenwood & Batley, closely supervising its production. Aggrieved over the slow rate of manufacture, after 15 months he had the machine delivered to Southwark…