“ELS”— EMPA’s new revolutionary testing machine

For many years, the testing of heavy steel cables has been an important task of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing (EMPA). In addition to the routine investigation of small and medium sized cables (as employed for cable cars), it is often necessary to test very heavy specimens having extremely high strengths. Since the machines available up to 1960 could produce a maximum force of only 1 MN, which did not suffice, efforts were made to develop a stronger testing machine. After a period of improvised solutions, a fundamentally new concept was introduced. The testing machine “ELS” (=Experiments with Long Specimens), developed and built at EMPA, has successfully accomplished its trial tests.