National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)

National Physical Laboratory

Painting of the laboratory by Lee Campbell, resident artist there in 2009
Established	1900 (1900)
Research type	Applied Physics
Field of research	Metrology
Director	Peter Thompson
Staff	650[1]
Address	Hampton Road, Teddington, TW11 0LW, England
Location	51°25′35″N 0°20′37″W / 51.42639°N 0.34361°W / 51.42639; -0.34361Coordinates: 51°25′35″N 0°20′37″W / 51.42639°N 0.34361°W / 51.42639; -0.34361
Operating agency	Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – National Measurement Office
Website	npl.co.uk

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the national measurement standards laboratory for the United Kingdom, based at Bushy Park in Teddington, London, England. It is the largest applied physics organisation in the UK.

Description

The electricity Division of the National Physical Laboratory in 1944

NPL is an internationally respected centre of excellence in measurement and materials science. Since 1900, when Bushy House was selected as the site of NPL, it has developed and maintained the primary national measurement standards. Today it provides the scientific resources for the National Measurement System financed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

NPL also offers a range of commercial services, applying scientific skills to industrial measurement problems, and manages the MSF time signal. The NPL cooperates with professional networks such as those of the IET to support scientists and engineers concerned with areas of work in which it has expertise.

NPL is at the forefront of new developments in metrology, such as researching metrology for, and standardising, nanotechnology.^[2]

NPL is mainly based on the Teddington site but also has a site in Huddersfield for dimensional metrology^[3] and an underwater acoustics facility at Wraysbury Reservoir.^[4]

Teddington was also home to the UK National Chemical Laboratory but this was closed in 1965 and some of its work was transferred to NPL.

Operation

The laboratory was initially run by the UK government, with members of staff being part of the civil service. Administration of the NPL was contracted out in 1995 under a GOCO model, with Serco winning the bid and all staff transferred to their employ. Under this regime, overhead costs halved, third party revenues grew by 16% per annum, and the number of peer-reviewed research papers published doubled.^[5] It was decided in 2012 to change the operating model for NPL from 2014 onward to include academic partners and to establish a postgraduate teaching institute on site.^[6] The date of the changeover was later postponed for up to a year.^[7] The candidates for lead academic partner were the Universities of Edinburgh, Southampton, Strathclyde and Surrey^[8] with an alliance of the Universities of Strathclyde and Surrey chosen as preferred partners.^[9] The laboratory transferred back to Department for Business, Innovation and Skills ownership on 1 January 2015.^[10]

Buildings

NPL was initially sited entirely within Bushy House but grew to fill a large selection of buildings on the Teddington site.^[11] Many of these buildings were demolished and the work moved to a large state-of-the-art laboratory for NPL that was built between 1998 and 2007. The construction and operation of this new building were initially being run under a PFI scheme, before transferring back to the DTI in 2004 after the private sector companies involved made losses of over £100m.^[12]

In January 2013 funding for a new £25m Advanced Metrology Laboratory was announced that will be built on the footprint of an existing unused building.^[13][14]

• NPL buildings
• 
  Bushy House
• 
  the Darwin building
• 
  Part of the new building
• 
  NPL's main entrance on Hampton Road
• 
  Ground floor plan of Bushy House in 1901/1902
• 
  Basement plan of Bushy House in 1901/1902

Researchers

• Notable researchers at NPL
• 
  Robert Watson-Watt
• 
  Louis Essen (right)

Researchers who have worked at NPL include Donald Davies, who was one of two independent inventors of packet switching in the early 1960s;^[15] D. W. Dye who did important work in developing the technology of quartz clocks; Louis Essen, who invented a more accurate atomic clock than those first built in America. Others who have spent time at NPL include Harry Huskey, a computer pioneer; Alan Turing, one of the fathers of modern digital computing who was largely responsible for the early ACE computer design; Robert Watson-Watt, generally considered the inventor of radar, Oswald Kubaschewski, the father of computational materials thermodynamics and the numerical analyst James Wilkinson.

H.J. Gough one of the pioneers of research into metal fatigue worked at NPL for 19 years from 1914 to 1938. The inventor Sir Barnes Wallis did early development work there on the "Bouncing Bomb" used in the "Dam Busters" wartime raids.^[16] Sydney Goldstein and Sir James Lighthill worked in NPL's aerodynamics division during World War II researching boundary layer theory and supersonic aerodynamics respectively. Dr Clifford Hodge also worked there and was engaged in research on semiconductors.

Directors of NPL

• Directors of NPL
• 
  E. V. Appleton
• 
  W. L. Bragg
• 
  C. G. Darwin
• 
  Peter Clapham

• 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
• Dr Reginald Leslie Smith-Rose, 1955–1956 (acting)
• Sir Gordon Brims Black McIvor Sutherland, 1956–1964
• Dr John Vernon Dunworth, 1964–1977
• Dr Paul Dean, 1977–1990
• Dr Peter Clapham, 1990–1995

Managing Directors

• Dr John Rae, 1995–2000
• Dr Bob McGuiness, 2000–2005
• Steve McQuillan, 2005–2008
• Dr Martyn Sené, 2008–2009, 2015 (acting)
• Dr Brian Bowsher, 2009–2015

Chief Executive Officers

• Dr Peter Thompson, 2015–present^[17]

See also

• NPL network

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom).

• NPL Website
• NPL Video Podcast
• Second Health in Second Life
• NMS Home Page
• NPL YouTube Channel
• NPL Sports and Social Club
• Ethos Journal profile of the National Physical Laboratory