Knowledge through high-precision measurements: the PTB

On 8 October 2013, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt [PTB] in Germany was honoured as an EPS Historic Site. The ceremonial event took place at PTB’s Berlin Institute, where the precursor of PTB, the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt [PTR], was founded in 1887. The PTR was the first large national non-university research facility in Germany and the first metrology institute in the world.
Big names in physics and important scientific results characterised the first decades of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt at the end of the 19th and at the start of the 20th centuries. The then Imperial Institute…