International Bureau of Weights and Measures - Function

Function

Under the authority of the Metric Convention, the BIPM helps to ensure uniformity of SI weights and measures around the world. It does so through a series of consultative committees, whose members are the national metrology laboratories of the Convention's member states, and through its own laboratory work.

The BIPM carries out measurement-related research. It takes part in and organises international comparisons of national measurement standards and performs calibrations for member states.

The BIPM has an important role in maintaining accurate worldwide time of day. It combines, analyzes, and averages the official atomic time standards of member nations around the world to create a single, official Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

The BIPM is also the keeper of the international prototype of the kilogram.

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