National Institute of Standards and Technology


The National Institute of Standards and Technology is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical science laboratory programs that include nanoscale science and technology, engineering, information technology, neutron research, material measurement, and physical measurement. From 1901 to 1988, the agency was named the National Bureau of Standards.
The NIST Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.

History

Background

The Articles of Confederation, ratified by the colonies in 1781, provided:
The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective states—fixing the standards of weights and measures throughout the United States.

Article 1, section 8, of the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1789, granted these powers to the new Congress: "The Congress shall have power... To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures".
In January 1790, President George Washington, in his first annual message to Congress, said, "Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to."
On October 25, 1791, Washington again appealed to Congress:
A uniformity of the weights and measures of the country is among the important objects submitted to you by the Constitution and if it can be derived from a standard at once invariable and universal, must be no less honorable to the public council than conducive to the public convenience.

In 1821, President John Quincy Adams declared, "Weights and measures may be ranked among the necessities of life to every individual of human society.". Nevertheless, it was not until 1838 that the United States government adopted a uniform set of standards.
From 1830 until 1901, the role of overseeing weights and measures was carried out by the Office of Standard Weights and Measures, which was part of the Survey of the Coast—renamed the United States Coast Survey in 1836 and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878—in the United States Department of the Treasury.

Bureau of Standards (1901–1988)

In 1901, in response to a bill proposed by Congressman James H. Southard, the Bureau of Standards was founded with the mandate to provide standard weights and measures, and to serve as the national physical laboratory for the United States. Southard had previously sponsored a bill for metric conversion of the United States.
President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Samuel W. Stratton as the first director. The budget for the first year of operation was $40,000. The Bureau took custody of the copies of the kilogram and meter bars that were the standards for US measures, and set up a program to provide metrology services for United States scientific and commercial users. A laboratory site was constructed in Washington, DC, and instruments were acquired from the national physical laboratories of Europe. In addition to weights and measures, the Bureau developed instruments for electrical units and for measurement of light. In 1905 a meeting was called that would be the first "National Conference on Weights and Measures".
Initially conceived as purely a metrology agency, the Bureau of Standards was directed by Herbert Hoover to set up divisions to develop commercial standards for materials and products. Some of these standards were for products intended for government use, but product standards also affected private-sector consumption. Quality standards were developed for products including some types of clothing, automobile brake systems and headlamps, antifreeze, and electrical safety. During World War I, the Bureau worked on multiple problems related to war production, even operating its own facility to produce optical glass when European supplies were cut off.
Between the wars, Harry Diamond of the Bureau developed a blind approach radio aircraft landing system. During World War II, military research and development was carried out, including development of radio propagation forecast methods, the proximity fuze and the standardized airframe used originally for Project Pigeon, and shortly afterwards the autonomously radar-guided Bat anti-ship guided bomb and the Kingfisher family of torpedo-carrying missiles.
In 1948, financed by the United States Air Force, the Bureau began design and construction of SEAC, the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer. The computer went into operation in May 1950 using a combination of vacuum tubes and solid-state diode logic. About the same time the Standards Western Automatic Computer, was built at the Los Angeles office of the NBS by Harry Huskey and used for research there. A mobile version, DYSEAC, was built for the Signal Corps in 1954.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (from 1988)

Due to a changing mission, the "National Bureau of Standards" became the "National Institute of Standards and Technology" in 1988. Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, under the National Construction Safety Team Act, NIST conducted the official investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Following the 2021 Surfside condominium building collapse, NIST sent engineers to the site to investigate the cause of the collapse.
In 2019, NIST launched a program named NIST on a Chip to decrease the size of instruments from lab machines to chip size. Applications include aircraft testing, communication with satellites for navigation purposes, and temperature and pressure.
In 2023, the Biden administration began plans to create a U.S. AI Safety Institute within NIST to coordinate AI safety matters. According to The Washington Post, NIST is considered "notoriously underfunded and understaffed", which could present an obstacle to these efforts.

Constitution

NIST, known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards, is a measurement standards laboratory, also known as the National Metrological Institute, which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. The institute's official mission is to:
NIST had an operating budget for fiscal year 2007 of about $843.3 million. NIST's 2009 budget was $992 million, and it also received $610 million as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. NIST employs about 2,900 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support and administrative personnel. About 1,800 NIST associates complement the staff. NIST partners with 1,400 manufacturing specialists and staff at nearly 350 affiliated centers around the country. NIST publishes the Handbook 44 that provides the "Specifications, tolerances, and other technical requirements for weighing and measuring devices".

Metric system

The Congress of 1866 made use of the metric system in commerce a legally protected activity through the passage of Metric Act of 1866. In May 1875, 17 out of 20 countries signed a document known as the Metric Convention or the Treaty of the Meter, which established the International Bureau of Weights and Measures under the control of an international committee elected by the General Conference on Weights and Measures.

Organization

NIST is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and operates a facility in Boulder, Colorado, which was dedicated by President Eisenhower in 1954. NIST's activities are organized into laboratory programs and extramural programs. Effective October 2010, NIST was realigned by reducing the number of NIST laboratory units from ten to six. NIST Laboratories include:
  • Communications Technology Laboratory
  • Engineering Laboratory
  • Information Technology Laboratory
  • Center for Neutron Research
  • Material Measurement Laboratory
  • Physical Measurement Laboratory
Extramural programs include:
  • Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a nationwide network of centers to assist small and mid-sized manufacturers to create and retain jobs, improve efficiencies, and minimize waste through process improvements and to increase market penetration with innovation and growth strategies;
  • Technology Innovation Program, a grant program where NIST and industry partners cost share the early-stage development of innovative but high-risk technologies;
  • Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, which administers the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation's highest award for performance and business excellence.
NIST's Boulder laboratories are best known for NIST‑F1, which houses an atomic clock. NIST‑F1 serves as the source of the nation's official time. From its measurement of the natural resonance frequency of cesium—which defines the second—NIST broadcasts time signals via longwave radio station WWVB near Fort Collins, Colorado, and shortwave radio stations WWV and WWVH, located near Fort Collins and Kekaha, Hawaii, respectively.
NIST also operates a neutron science user facility: the NIST Center for Neutron Research. The NCNR provides scientists access to a variety of neutron scattering instruments, which they use in many research fields.
The SURF III Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility is a source of synchrotron radiation, in continuous operation since 1961. SURF III now serves as the US national standard for source-based radiometry throughout the generalized optical spectrum. All NASA-borne, extreme-ultraviolet observation instruments have been calibrated at SURF since the 1970s, and SURF is used for the measurement and characterization of systems for extreme ultraviolet lithography.
The Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology performs research in nanotechnology, both through internal research efforts and by running a user-accessible cleanroom nanomanufacturing facility. This "NanoFab" is equipped with tools for lithographic patterning and imaging.