How
Physics Got Precise
Although the ancients knew the length of the year to about ten parts per million, it was not until the end of the 19th century that precision measurements came to play a defining role in physics. Eventually such measurements made it possible to replace human-made artifacts for the standards of length and time with natural standards. For a new generation of atomic clocks, time keeping could be so precise that the effects of the local gravitational potentials on the clock rates would be important. This would force us to re-introduce an artifact into the definition of the second- the location of the primary clock. I will describe some of the events in the history of precision measurements that have led us to this pleasing conundrum, and some of the unexpected uses of atomic clocks today.