Charge It, Please! [History of Physical Standards]

This article features the history of the volt from the invention of the battery by Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Volta, to the succeeding works by several groups of scientists and institutions including the identification of the unit of EMF as the volt, the development of calibration and voltage standards, the improvement of battery performance, and the application of Brian Josephson's discovery to the instrumentation and measurement techniques of EMF standards. The projects and undertakings of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) and other significant research institutions in studying and evaluating the standard volt are detailed.