EDITORIAL: MacroScale 2011: Recent Developments in Traceable Dimensional Measurements MacroScale 2011: Recent Developments in Traceable Dimensional Measurements

The MacroScale 2011 conference was held at the Swiss Federal Office of Metrology METAS from 4-6 October 2011, and was jointly organized by METAS and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt PTB. The conference subtitle 'Recent Developments in Traceable Dimensional Measurements' is reminiscent of a conference series which most recently took place in San Diego in 2005. It is intended that the MacroScale conference be held every three years at different locations worldwide. As the conference was organized under the auspices of CCL, the Consultative Committee for Length within the Metre Convention, it brought together 70 participants, mainly researchers from national metrology institutes, but also from academia and industry, representing 32 countries all together. It provided a forum for experts and scientists in the area of dimensional metrology for an exchange of information, for discussions and for the transfer of new results to the scientific community. The participants were encouraged to submit their papers to Measurement Science and Technology, and as a result we are delighted to present a selection in this special issue of MacroScale 2011.

As in the previous conferences on 'Recent Developments in Traceable Dimensional Measurements' the focus of the MacroScale is on the highest level length measurements of objects ranging from µm to km in size and on their traceability to the SI unit of length. At the MacroScale 2011 the following fields were addressed: interferometry, calibration of length standards, coordinate metrology, form measurements, surface texture measurements, tactile, optical and electronic sensors for surface or structure localization, temperature and force measurements and angle metrology. A total of 31 oral and 17 poster presentations were given during the conference, demonstrating the progress in the development of instruments, in methods and algorithms, in the determination of measurement uncertainty as well as on results of international comparison measurements. During the conference many enthusiastic discussions took place and a huge interest was shown in the future progression of the MacroScale conference series.

From the total of 48 contributions presented at the MacroScale 2011, a relatively large number of peer-reviewed articles (18) now finally appear in the present special issue of Measurement Science and Technology. The production of this issue has involved considerable effort made by many contributors. We would like to thank all the authors for their contributions, the referees for the time spent reviewing the contributions and their valuable comments, and the editor and publishing team of MST for their great support.