National Physical Laboratory

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the national measurement standards laboratory of the United Kingdom. It sets and maintains physical standards for British industry. It was established in 1900 at Bushy House in Teddington and is one of the oldest metrology institutes in the world. Research and development work at the laboratory has contributed to many disciplines of science, including the development of early computers in the late 1940s and 1950s, where Alan Turing led the design of the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) and Donald Davies took over the project and delivered the Pilot ACE, which first worked in May 1950, and the invention and first implementation of packet switching in the 1960s, which is one of the fundamental technologies of the Internet. NPL is based at Bushy Park in Teddington, in south-western Greater London.