Today physics is widely taught in schools and universities. Physics research is carried out in laboratories supported by Government, university, and industry. Around 1900, however, these activities were new. The first university laboratories for physics teaching and research were set up in the later nineteenth century following the pioneering work of Lord Kelvin in Glasgow.

At that time, the growth of electric telegraph network, and the laying of telegraph cables across the Atlantic, had encouraged closer links between physicists, engineers and instrument-makers.

During the First World War the British Government set up the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), the forerunner of the present day research councils, to fund scientific research in Britain on a significant scale.