The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the home of time in the UK, took to the river Thames for a historic event in partnership with Royal Museums Greenwich and the Jubilant Trust.
NPL presented the Royal Museums Greenwich with an atomic clock to celebrate the relationship between the two organisations who have played and continue to play such an influential role in how the world tells time.
This momentous occasion coincided with the 21st birthday of the Jubilant Trust. A flotilla of boats, the Jubilant leading the way, rowed from Isleworth to Royal Museum Greenwich, carrying the gifted atomic clock from NPL to the museum.
This was the world’s most accurate optical atomic clock in 2004 and consists of a single ion of strontium trapped and cooled within the vacuum chamber. NPL’s latest optical clocks are more than 100 times more accurate and one has recently started contributing to International Atomic Time.
This follows in the tradition of the first Jubilant flotilla in 2002, which presented a caesium atomic clock which had been rowed down the Thames.
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