National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)

National Physical Laboratory
NPL's main entrance on Hampton Road
Established1900 (1900)
Research typeApplied Physics
Field of research
Metrology
Chief Executive Officer
Peter Thompson
Staffc. 1,000[1]
AddressHampton Road, Teddington, TW11 0LW, England, UK
Location51°25′35″N 0°20′37″W / 51.42639°N 0.34361°W / 51.42639; -0.34361
Operating agency
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
Websitewww.npl.co.uk

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the national measurement standards laboratory of the United Kingdom. It sets and maintains physical standards for British industry.

Founded in 1900, the NPL is one of the oldest metrology institutes in the world. Research and development work at the laboratory has contributed to the advancement of many disciplines of science, including the development of early computers in the late 1940s and 1950s, construction of the first accurate atomic clock in 1955, and the invention and pioneering implementation of packet switching in the 1960s, which is today one of the fundamental technologies of the Internet.[2][3][4] The former heads of NPL include many individuals who were pillars of the British scientific establishment.[5][6]

NPL is based at Bushy Park in Teddington, west London. It is managed under the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and is one of the most extensive government laboratories in the United Kingdom.

  1. ^ "About us". NPLWebsite. Archived from the original on 23 July 2020. Retrieved 24 February 2021.
  2. ^ Needham, Roger M. (2002). "Donald Watts Davies, C.B.E. 7 June 1924 – 28 May 2000". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 48: 87–96. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2002.0006. ISSN 0080-4606. S2CID 72835589. This was the start of 10 years of pioneering work at the NPL in packet switching. ... At that lecture he first became aware that Paul Baran, of the RAND Corporation, had proposed a similar system in the context of military communication. His report was not as detailed as Davies's design and had not been acted on.
  3. ^ Feder, Barnaby J. (4 June 2000). "Donald W. Davies, 75, Dies; Helped Refine Data Networks". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 6 April 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2020. Donald W. Davies, who proposed a method for transmitting data that made the Internet possible
  4. ^ Harris, Trevor, Who is the Father of the Internet? The case for Donald Watts Davies, archived from the original on 10 October 2021, retrieved 10 July 2013
  5. ^ Naughton, John (24 September 2015). A Brief History of the Future. Orion. ISBN 978-1-4746-0277-8. Archived from the original on 18 August 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  6. ^ Russell, Andrew L. (28 April 2014). Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-91661-5. Archived from the original on 10 October 2021. Retrieved 27 October 2020.

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