Kirkaldy, David

(b. Dundee, Scotland, 4 April 1820; d. London, England, 25 January 1897)

metallurgy, mechanical engineering.

Kirkaldy, who was poor in health as a boy, was educated by a Dr. Low at Dundee and at Merchiston Castle, Edinburgh. He worked first in his father’s shipping office and then as an apprentice in the shipbuilding works of Robert Napier in Govan (Glasgow) in 1843. He was transferred to the drawing office where he developed skills which, in 1855, brought him the signal honor of having his engineering drawings exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He received many other awards for the excellence of his drawings, among them a gold medal at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. He took an early interest, entirely novel in his day for its quantitative approach, in the performance of ships on trial. He showed how to rectify defects in a vessel by the comparative study of performance figures.

Kirkaldy’s main contribution to science and engineering, however, proved to be in the field of testing. He became engaged in this in 1858 when Napier asked him to compare the merits of iron and steel for some high-pressure boilers. He studied testing methods for some years and published his findings in papers and in Results of an Experimental Enquiry (1862), a book of great importance. Some of his tests gave rise to new methods of improving steel, for example, an oil-hardening process which he patented.

He eventually became independently established in his profession and spent the rest of his life as a testing consultant and manufacturer of testing machinery. Kirkaldy’s first machine was publicly demonstrated on 1 January 1866, and one of his first public commissions was for testing the materials for the Blackfriars Bridge. He was able to attract many commissions, for testing and for supplying testing machinery, from foreign governments, construction firms, and even a laboratory at University College, London.

Forthright in manner, Kirkaldy commanded respect but fell foul of more conservative professional colleagues. Nevertheless he succeeded in establishing the testing of materials as an essential factor in civil engineering construction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kirkaldy’s originality is readily seen in Results of an Experimental Enquiry Into the Comparative Strength and Other Properties of Various Kinds of Wrought Iron and Steel (Glasgow, 1862), and in Result of an Experimental Enquiry Into the Relative Properties of Wrought Iron Plates Manufactured at Essen and in Yorkshire (London, 1876). For a summary of his professional experience, written by his son and supervised by himself in the latter part of his life, see W. G. Kirkaldy, Illustration of D. Kirkaldy’s System of Mechanical Testing as originated and carried on by him (London, 1891). Kirkaldy also contributed supplementary matter to Peter Barlow, Treatise on the Strength of Materials, 3rd ed. (London, 1867).

On Kirkaldy’s contribution to knowledge of the crystal structure of metals, see C. S. Smith, History of Metallography (Chicago, 1960), pp. 161-163. Memoirs of Kirkaldy are found in Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 128 (1897), 351-356, and in Engineer, 83 (1897), 147, with portrait.

Frank Greenaway