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accredited calibration laboratories, and its aim is to harmonize the
operation of the national calibration chains. National coherence
mirrors international coherence, although each country has its own
national standards. A national organization studies, creates, maintains
and upholds its standards. It sets up a system that connects the
industrials’ standards, the measuring instruments and the results of the
measurements themselves. As any system drifts, there is a need for a
periodic follow-up in the field: it is the accreditation of the calibration
laboratories that assumes the checking function, providing a link
between the needs of industry and the National Metrology Institute. In
France, this system was installed in 1969 by the Bureau National de
Métrologie which consisted of five primary metrology laboratories
and was in charge of the system of traceability chains and of the
accreditation of the calibration laboratories. The latter activity was
taken up by the COFRAC in 1994. In 2005, the monitoring of French
metrology was transferred to the Laboratoire National de Métrologie
et d’Essais (LNE).
In Italy, the metrology system is based on three primary institutes
which have established and supervised the national standards since
1950, and on the Italian calibration service which has been accrediting
the calibration laboratories in Italy since 1979. It provides a chain for
the dissemination of the standards and guarantees the traceability of
all measurement results to the International System of units. The
Italian system has been acknowledged since 1991 by a law, no. 273,
which establishes a national system of calibration (SNT) which in turn
integrates all the structures (primary laboratories and accrediting
institutes).
In Switzerland, the federal government is responsible for the
legislation related to metrology and for the diffusion of units. Legal
metrology, which would be called regulated metrology today, is the
business of the cantons. The confederation has created a federal office
of metrology and the cantons have set up verification offices to carry
out the tasks. All the official activities of metrology are to be found
gathered in one institution and one place, the federal office of
metrology and accreditation, METAS, which also manages the Swiss
Accreditation Service, the SAS. This centralized organization was
adopted at the beginning of the confederation’s activities related to
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