The Victorians were an inventive lot. Keen to experiment and progress, they were fascinated with gadgets and came up with a plethora of wacky inventions.

Some - like the motor car, camera, telephone, sewing machine, adhesive stamp and electric light bulb - helped to shape the future and would probably have won approval from the Victorian equivalent of Dragon's Den. But others, such as the self-pouring teapot and the hand-operated page-turner, didn't catch on!

Wacky Gadgets, an exhibition running at Bradford Industrial Museum, celebrates the curious contraptions produced in the 19th and early 20th centuries which, like the motorcyclists' tobacco pipe, quickly burned out.

The exhibition has been loaned by Maurice Collins, who has been collecting weird and wonderful gadgets for three decades. Maurice is co-founder of the charity Kith and Kids, which helps families with disabled children, and proceeds from the hire of his collection will go to the charity.

I went along to check out the gadgets, gizmos and thingamabobs on display and was delighted to discover that, accompanying the exhibition, was a screening of The Wrong Trousers - which is, of course, all about Wallace's wacky invention that goes horribly wrong, until Gromit saves the day.

The first of the 150 exhibits I came across was a 1902 clockwork teasmade, a contraption involving a wind-up clock and a copper kettle. When the alarm clock goes off it pushes a series of levers, causing a match to strike sandpaper which lights a heater and boils water! The water is then poured into the teapot. Sadly, it was prone to catching fire so didn't prove popular.

I was also drawn to a pair of risky-looking Victorian ladies' roller skates. A wooden contraption is attached to the knees and you balance on what look like mini motorbikes. Rolling around on those wheels must have been pretty precarious, with a long way to fall.

Other delights included an 1890 pea-popper, 1930 fried egg-maker, 1920 tennis ball cleaner and 1895 pocket spittoon - an ornate little bottle to carry your spit in. Nice. There's the Codswallop Bottle, designed to keep lemonade fizzy, a copper feet-warmer, automatic card distributor, pie crust-maker, Victorian ice bicycle and ladies' gun purse, a dainty little thing with a tiny .22 pistol from 1880 nestled in the purple silk lining. What every girl needed to protect herself from the 19th Century mugger.

Some items reveal that the Victorians could rival today's surgically-enhanced society for vanity. A metal nose-shaper was produced in Germany in 1890, long before the nose job was a twinkle in a plastic surgeon's eye. The nasally-challenged Victorian would put it on at night, adjust the screws to form the shape of their desired nose, and presumably wake up with a beautiful conk. Then there's the 1910 ear-flattener, a complicated-looking device designed to pin back those pesky sticky-out ears, and an upper lip hair remover involving hot wax... ouch!

Visitors are invited to come up with their own inventions and the winning design will be produced at the museum. A selection of the gadgets on display are demonstrated by museum staff each Saturday at 1pm until the exhibition ends on April 15.

The museum - Yorkshire's first industrial museum - is in the former Moorside Mills, built around 1875 as a small worsted spinning mill. In 1970 Bradford Council bought it from Messrs W & J Whitehead to create an innovative museum.

Today it houses permanent displays of textile machinery, steam power, engineering and motor vehicles, offering a fascinating journey into Bradford's industrial past. Walking along the old stone floors, you can smell industry and machines, steam and oil.

In the Transport Gallery there are lovely Jowett cars, an old Telegraph & Argus delivery van and ice-cream van, vintage motorbikes and sidecars, a 1923 coal-fired steam roller, a three-wheeled gun car used in the First World War, 1940s wheeled fire escape ladders from Ravenscliffe Mills at Calverley and rickety-looking bicycles, including penny farthings.

Then there's the lovely Nellie, a steam engine you can climb onto, which anyone who visited the museum as a child will recall with affection. Nestled among the vehicles are old Bradford road signs, postboxes and a red telephone box.

Further on are gas and steam engines and pumps that powered the looms in Bradford's mills, and an assortment of printing presses, some ridiculously complicated-looking and some beautifully ornate. As far as I recall, there are looms on display upstairs which are sometimes switched on, giving visitors an insight into the deafening noise that mill-workers endured.

A blue double-decker trolley bus - the No 7376 to Thornton - stands proudly next to a 1920s Bradford Corporation tramcar, en route' to Thackley. It's a shame visitors can't climb aboard these vehicles; judging from the group of people I met with their faces pressed against the bus windows, recalling the days of trams and trolley buses with affection, they're clearly a popular attraction.

In the cafe - a pleasant tea-room with gingham table-cloths - is a striking exhibition called Landscapes and Manscapes, a series of vibrant watercolours by artist Kath Tarpy of local scenes including the Odeon and Dalton Mills. The limited edition prints are for sale.

The You Are Here gallery illustrates the history of generations of settlers and their influence on modern Bradford. Taking pride of place is the giant Coat of Many Cultures made by children from Springwood Community Primary and Hanson schools.

Outside, the museum's magnificent working shire horses were resting in the stables, fresh from taking visitors on a trap ride. As well as working in various capacities on Bradford's streets, the horses often feature in films or TV dramas.

The mill-workers cottages, standing in the grounds, have also appeared in films - the latest being Private Life, made by Shipley film-maker Abbe Robinson. The three back-to-back houses, called Gaythorne Row, are furnished in the periods of 1870s, 1940s and 1950s, allowing a peek into the living conditions of Bradford families from the slum-ridden mid-Victorian era to the post-war years. Behind the stone-built cottages are outside privvies'.

A visitors' area within Gaythorne Row includes a poignant Bradford Pals exhibition on First World War recruitment. Particularly moving are old photographs of fresh-faced youths in flat caps learning how to handle guns, contrasted with Bradford Telegraph reports of the Somme offensive accompanied by Local Heroes pages about the district's young men who lost their lives.

Standing in contrast with the humble mill-workers' cottages is the mill manager's house, complete with stuffed cat curled up in front of the kitchen fire.

The thought of spending an afternoon browsing through Bradford's industrial heritage may not sound particularly enticing, but once there you'll find an Aladdin's cave of attractions, including plenty to keep the children amused and interested.