Precise measurement of the half-life of the Fermi β decay of 26Alm

State-of-the-art signal digitization and analysis techniques have been used to measure the half-life of the Fermi beta decay of Al-26(m). The half-life was determined to be 6347.8 +/- 2.5 ms. This new datum contributes to the experimental testing of the conserved-vector-current hypothesis and the required unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix: two essential components of the standard model. Detailed discussion of the experimental techniques and data analysis and a thorough investigation of the statistical and systematic uncertainties are presented.