Science & Engineering

The museums, the machines and the men and women who worked it out: laboratories kept as they were, beam engines under steam, the tunnel, the barrier, the roofs, and the plaques on the houses where the ideas came.

Tell us what we can do better, or what you’re trying to discover.

National Physical Laboratory

The home of Britain's measurements at Teddington - the metre, the second, the first atomic clock, Turing's ACE - open to the public one day a year.

Learned societiesOpen days onlyGo inside

Photo by David Howard, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The NPL was founded in 1900 in Bushy House, the Georgian mansion the Duke of Clarence had lived in, to set the nation's standards of length, mass and time, and it still does: the caesium atomic clock that first defined the second was built here by Louis Essen in 1955, Turing designed the ACE computer here after the war, and the laboratory's clocks are among those the world's time is averaged from. It is a working site behind a fence, but the annual open day lets anyone in to see the clocks, the labs and the house, and Bushy Park is over the wall.

Where
Hampton Road, Teddington, TW11 0LW
Nearest station
Teddington · 10 min walk

One open day a year, booked ahead; otherwise not open

NearbyScience & Engineering

NearbyOther Categories

See more nearby listings

Submit a correction for this listing.

Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

Which area are you in?