This theme was chosen to create awareness of the important role measurement plays in facilitating fair global trade, ensuring products meet standards and regulations, and satisfying customer quality expectations.
Indeed more widely metrology, the science of measurement, plays a central role in scientific discovery and innovation, industrial manufacturing and international trade, in improving the quality of life and in protecting the global environment.
Across the world, national metrology institutes continually advance measurement science by developing and validating new measurement techniques at the necessary level of sophistication. The national metrology institutes participate in measurement comparisons coordinated by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) to ensure the reliability of measurement results worldwide.
World Metrology Day is an annual celebration of the signature of the Metre Convention on 20 May 1875 by representatives of seventeen nations. The Convention set the framework for global collaboration in the science of measurement and in its industrial, commercial and societal applications. The original aim of the Metre Convention – the world-wide uniformity of measurement – remains as important today as it was in 1875.
The World Metrology Day project is realized jointly by the BIPM and the OIML.
About the BIPM
The signing of the Metre Convention in 1875 created the BIPM and for the first time formalised international cooperation in metrology. The Convention established the International Bureau of Weights and Measures and laid the foundations for worldwide uniformity of measurement in all aspects of our endeavours, historically focusing on and assisting industry and trade, but today just as vital as we tackle the grand challenges of the 21st Century such as climate change, health, and energy. The BIPM undertakes scientific work at the highest level on a selected set of physical and chemical quantities. The BIPM is the hub of a worldwide network of national metrology institutes (NMIs) which continue to realise and disseminate the chain of traceability to the SI into national accredited laboratories and industry.
About the OIML
In 1955 the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML) was established as an Intergovernmental Treaty Organisation in order to promote the global harmonisation of legal metrology procedures with the Bureau International de Métrologie Légale (BIML) as the Secretariat and Headquarters of the OIML. Since that time, the OIML has developed a worldwide technical structure whose primary aim is to harmonise the regulations and metrological controls applied by the national metrological services, or related organizations.