On 29 November 2016, on the occasion of the Luxembourg Office of Metrology’s 200th anniversary, the Luxembourg Deputy Prime Minister, Étienne Schneider, announced that the office will receive a national atomic clock.
In light of this development on the Luxembourg Office of Metrology’s bicentenary anniversary, the Luxembourgish Institute for the Normalisation, Accreditation, Security and Quality of Products and Services (ILNAS) will also disseminate the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in Luxembourg, starting from next year.
The UTC is essential for many activities such as grant requests or bank card payments, earth and space navigation, and also for modern logistics with multimodal transport systems.
During his speech, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy, Étienne Schneider, stated that: “This atomic clock will serve as a national reference for measuring the exact time in the context of several activities, both scientific and commercial. By having pinpoint precision, the clock’s margin of error has not exceeded one second in three million years. This installation will be integrated into the heart of a network of more than 400 official atomic clocks from the International Bureau of Weights and Measures which calculates the International Atomic Time.”
The clock, which will be delivered in 2017, will be housed in the ILNAS’ premises in Esch/Belval.
Photo by MECO. From left to right: Étienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy; Jean-Marie Reiff, Manager of ILNAS ; Mike Halsdorf from ILNAS
