Kirkaldy Testing Museum |
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ZILCHOO RECOMMENDS
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One of London's stranger museums, the Kirkaldy Testing Museum is a must for anyone with a love of machines and engineering. It houses David Kirkaldy's 350-ton "All Purpose Testing Machine", once used to test the strength of everything from bricks and concrete.
The colossal testing machine is nearly fifty feet in length, its 116 tons rest on steel girders that are in turn supported by thick brick pillars. It’s a formidable machine that dwarfs the rest of the museum’s motley collection of testing apparatus, including devices for testing the tensile strength of wires, the crush resistance of concrete briquettes and even the durability of parachute webbing. GUIDED TOUR A guided tour takes about an hour, and there's enough history and unusual equipment to maintain the interest of anyone who's reasonably technically minded and sufficiently curious to make the effort to go there in the first place. ENTRANCE Walk round to the back of the museum, on Price Street, and ring the doorbell.
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