No scientific experiment, no industrial process and no trade of goods and merchandise can do without quantification. Measurement technology and metrology – its scientific backbone – have today virtually become a matter of course. However, this matter of course of precise and reliable measurements must be acquired; and this not only once, but continuously – synchronously with the continually increasing accuracy requirements of the "metrology customers". For this reason, the mandate for a national metrology institute (NMI) –such as the PTB – is to ensure a continuously functioning and, consequently, a reliable and progressive metrological infrastructure which meets both the highest requirements of science and high-tech industry, on the one hand, and the marginal conditions of legal metrology in everyday life, on the other hand. All these facets are combined under the umbrella of PTB.
