The events in the world of measurement – metrology – this day in May 2000 would be more or less comparable with the following fictitious sports news: "In the Champions League the great clubs Manchester United and FC Barcelona have agreed close cooperation – joint trainer seminars, exchange of players and agreements on the tactics will in future be quite usual." And this is what really happened: The national metrology institutes of the US and Germany – the National Institute for Standards and Technology (
NIST) and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) – as well as the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und –prüfung (BAM, Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing) moved closer together at the highest metrological level and concluded a Memorandum of Understanding.
While in sports such an agreement would reduce the charm of the game, metrology will profit and become more powerful, and the economic relations between the two states will go off more smoothly.
This arrangement consistently implemented its global political intention as regards science and technology: to unify metrology all over the world to the benefit of economy. For the lesser the technical barriers to trade, the less unhindered global trade. But deviating "metrological philosophies" can constitute such barriers even today if, for example, the measuring instrument must be tested again when crossing a border because only the national measurement standard is accepted. The Memorandum signed in the year 2000 thus expressly refers to such technical barriers to trade; metrological controversies will be avoided by the agreement on comparison measurements accepted by both countries.
The Memorandum is above all a measure building confidence in the metrological competence on the two sides of the Atlantic. The exchange of scientists, common seminars and workshops as well as scientific and technical cooperation in all metrological questions are therefore a central element of the memorandum which is a contribution to globalizing and harmonizing metrology.
© Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, last update: 2011-11-17, Volker Großmann
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