National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)

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.
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.
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.




Bushy House
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.
Researchers who have worked at NPL include Paul Baran and Donald Davies, who co-invented packet switching in the early 1960s; 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.
A new state-of-the-art laboratory for NPL at Teddington was completed in 2007.


Directors of NPL






One of NPL's buildings




Part of the new building
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
Dr John Rae, 1995–2000
Dr Bob McGuiness, 2000–2005
Steve McQuillan, 2005–2008
Dr Martyn Sené, 2008-2009 (acting)
Dr Brian Bowsher, 2009–Present

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