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 first implementation of packet switching in the 1960s, which is today one of the fundamental technologies of the Internet. The former heads of NPL include many individuals who were pillars of the British scientific establishment.[2][3]
NPL is based at Bushy Park in Teddington, a suburb in the Richmond upon Thames borough of south-western Greater London. It is operated by NPL Management Ltd, a company owned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and is one of the most extensive government laboratories in the United Kingdom.
History
Precursors
In the 19th century, the Kew Observatory was run by self-funded devotees of science. In the early 1850s, the observatory began charging fees for testing meteorological instruments and other scientific equipment. As universities in the United Kingdom created and expanded physics departments, the governing committee of the observatory became increasingly dominated by paid university physicists in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. By this time, instrument-testing was the observatory's main role. Physicists sought the establishment of a state-funded scientific institution for testing electrical standards.[4]
Founding
The National Physical Laboratory was established in 1900 at Bushy House in Teddington. Its purpose was "for standardising and verifying instruments, for testing materials, and for the determination of physical constants".[5] The laboratory was run by the UK government, with members of staff being part of the civil service. It grew to fill a large selection of buildings on the Teddington site.[6]
Late 20th century
Administration of NPL was contracted out in 1995 under a Government Owned Contractor Operated (GOCO) model, via a new operating company, NPL Management Ltd. Serco won the bid and all staff transferred to their employment. Under this regime, overhead costs halved, third-party revenues grew by 16% per annum, and the number of peer-reviewed research papers published doubled.[7][8]
NPL procured a large state-of-the-art laboratory under a Private Finance Initiative contract in 1998. The construction was undertaken by John Laing.[9]
21st century
The new laboratory building, which had been maintained by Serco, was transferred back to the DTI in 2004 after the private sector companies involved made losses of over £100M.[9]
It was decided in 2012 to change the operating model for NPL from 2014 onwards to include academic partners and to establish a postgraduate teaching institute on site.[10] The date of the changeover was later postponed for a year.[11] The candidates for lead academic partner were the Universities of Edinburgh, Southampton, Strathclyde and Surrey[12] with an alliance of the Universities of Strathclyde and Surrey chosen as preferred partners.[13]
Funding was announced in January 2013 for a new £25M Advanced Metrology Laboratory that will be built on the footprint of an existing unused building.
Notable researchers
Researchers who have worked at NPL include:[17] D. W. Dye who did important work in developing the technology of quartz clocks; the inventor Sir Barnes Wallis who did early development work on the "Bouncing Bomb" used in the "Dam Busters" wartime raids;[18] H. J. Gough, one of the pioneers of research into metal fatigue, who worked at NPL for 19 years from 1914 to 1938; and Sydney Goldstein and Sir James Lighthill who worked in NPL's aerodynamics division during World War II researching boundary layer theory and supersonic aerodynamics respectively.[19]
Alan Turing, known for his work at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park during the Second World War to decipher German encrypted messages, worked at the National Physical Laboratory from 1945 to 1947.[20] He designed there the
Research
NPL research has contributed to physical science, materials science, computing, and bioscience. Applications have been found in ship design, aircraft development, radar, computer networking, and global positioning.[23][24]
Directors of NPL
Directors of NPL include a number of notable individuals:[75]
Managing Directors
Chief Executive Officers
- Sir Richard Tetley Glazebrook, 1900–1919
- Sir Joseph Ernest Petavel, 1919–1936
- Sir Frank Edward Smith, 1936–1937 (acting)
- Sir William Lawrence Bragg, 1937–1938
- Sir Charles Galton Darwin, 1938–1949
- Sir Edward Victor Appleton, 1941 (acting)
- Sir Edward Crisp Bullard, 1948–1955
- Reginald Leslie Smith-Rose, 1955–1956 (acting)
- Sir Gordon Brims Black McIvor Sutherland
NPL buildings
See also
- Outline of metrology and measurement
- List of UK government scientific research institutes
- National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States
- National Physical Laboratory of India
- VAMAS
Further reading
External links
- Official website
- The birth of the Internet in the UK Google video featuring Roger Scantlebury, Peter Wilkinson, Peter Kirstein and Vint Cerf, 2013
- NPL Video Podcast
- NMS Home Page
- NPL YouTube channel
- NPL Sports and Social Club
- The National Physical Laboratory apprentices
- Benjamin Stone MP & the NPL – UK Parliament Living Heritage
References
- About us NPLWebsite, retrieved 2021-02-24^
- John Naughton. A Brief History of the Future Orion, 2015-09-24, retrieved 4 June 2020^
- Andrew L. Russell. Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks Cambridge University Press, 2014-04-28, retrieved 27 October 2020