From NBS to NIST

Over the past century, the National Institute of Standards and

Technology has had several different names. Founded as the

National Bureau of Standards in 1901, it was renamed Bureau of

Standards in 1 903. In 1 934, the v/ord "national" v^as affixed again

to its name. For more than 50 years it remained the National Bureau

of Standards, or NBS. It became the National Institute of Standards

and Technology, or NIST, in 1 988. To eliminate confusion, the name

National Institute of Standards and Technology is used throughout

this brochure.

During its first 1 00 years, NIST was led by the following directors:

Samuel W. Stratton, 1 901 -1922

George K. Burgess, 1 923-1 932

Lyman J. Briggs, 1932-1945

Edward U. Condon, 1945-1951

Allen V.Astin, 1951-1969

Lewis M. Branscomb, 1 969-1 972

Richard W. Roberts, 1973-1975

Ernest Ambler, 1975-1989

John W. Lyons, 1990-1993

Arati Prabhakar, 1993-1997

Raymond G. Kammer, 1 997-Present

For information on the cover photos: Front cover clockwise, from top, see

p. 27, p. 49, and p. 47; back cover clockwise, from top, see p. 3, p. 53,

p. 36, and p. 24.
N I ST a\ 100

Foundations for Progress

The new millennium is opening with the Information

Age shining on its horizon, just as the last century

unfolded with the dawn of the Age of Electricity.

Americans have experienced a 100-year span of extraordinary improvements in the U.S. economy and quality

of life. Since 1901, the National Institute of Standards

and Technology has contributed to these advances by

building the foundations for technological progress.

NIST has been a reliable source of assistance to industry, science, and government. Its research, measurement

tools, and technical services are integrated deeply into

many of the systems and operations that drive the economy. Factories, communication and transportation networks, laboratories, hospitals, educational organizations,

service companies, and the extended enterprises of the

new economy all rely on NIST.

On the threshold of its second century, NIST is committed to partnering even more vigorously with industry,

science, and government to build an advanced science

and technology infrastructure—the foundations needed

to ensure future progress and prosperity for U.S. industry

and the nation.^
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Before air conditioning, airplanes,

and plastics were invented, and

before science was changed forever by Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, the National Institute of Standards

and Technology (NIST) began laying the technical foundation for the world's most

prosperous nation.

Chartered by the U.S. Congress on March 3, 1901, it was the first physical sci- ence research laboratory of the federal government, established at about the same

time as the nation's first commercial laboratory. Teddy Roosevelt had just become

President; a middle-class annual income

was no more than $5,000. It was the dawn

of the age of technology.

At that time, the United States had few,

if any, authoritative national standards for any quantities or products. What it had was

a patchwork of locally and regionally

applied standards, often arbitrary, that were

a source of confusion in commerce. It was

difficult for Americans to conduct fair transactions or get parts to fit together

properly. Construction materials were of

uneven quality, and household products were unreliable. Few Americans worked as

scientists, because most scientific work was

based overseas. Yet the United States was becoming a world power, with an industrial economy

driven by the steam engine, the railroad,

and the expanding reach of electricity.

Other industrialized nations already had

established standards laboratories. The

need for such an organization in the United

States was discussed for many years by scientists and engineers. One complained, for example, that he had to contend with eight

different "authoritative" values for the U.S.

gallon. The growing electrical industry

needed measuring instruments and was

often involved in litigation because of the

lack of standards. American instruments

had to be sent abroad for calibration. The nation already had an office of weights and measures. The first efforts to provide accurate (albeit non-legal) stan- dards of weights and measures were made in the 1830s by Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, a Swiss engineer and metrologist who immiThe cornerstone was laid at the original NIST site in Washington, D.C., in 1903.

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grated to the United States and became the

first superintendent of weights and measures. But the office had few employees, and some people disUked the idea of the federal government imposing standards or any- thing else on industry.

After strong advocacy by leading

scientists and industrialists who

endorsed the concept of a national

standards laboratory, principally to meet the needs of electrical instru- ment makers and manufacturers,

the U.S. Congress agreed to go

along with the idea. NIST originally was part of the Treasury Department, then

moved to the Department of Commerce

and Labor, later split into two units. The

Institute went with the Department of Commerce, where it remains today. Samuel

W. Stratton, a professor of physics at the

University of Chicago, became the first

director, a post he held for 21 years.

Neon Lights Up in Public

A NIST exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition included modified

laboratory instruments (glass tubing) containing neon gas, similar to those below. When electricity was applied, the glass tubing lit up with a

reddish glow. Although a Frenchman is credited with inventing the neon lamp and obtaining a patent, he did not display the technology in public

until 1 910. Today, the neon sign industry is worth more than $1 bi llion.

NIST's founding was described in the March

11, 1 901 , edition of The Evening Star.

The original staff numbered 12. After

several years in temporary quarters, NIST

moved to a site on Connecticut Avenue in the District of Columbia, a few miles from

the White House. The scientific and tech- nological programs were started from

scratch. After improving the standards of

electrical measurement, NIST quickly

developed better standards of length and

mass and new standards of temperature,

light, and time. The Institute also established standards of safety in commerce and

industry and of performance among public

utilities, and it prepared and maintained

hundreds of standard samples of materials

that helped introduce quality control to U.S. industry. To advance fundamental sci- ence, NIST developed increasingly precise

instruments, measurement techniques

offering greater range than ever before, and

wholly new standards such as those for sound, frequency, and radiation. The need for standards was dramatized in 1904, when more than 1,500 buildings

burned down in Baltimore, Md., because of

a lack of standard fire-hose couplings.

When firefighters from Washington and as

far away as New York arrived to help douse

the fire, few of their hoses fit the hydrants.

NIST had collected more than 600 sizes and variations in fire-hose couplings in a previous investigation and, after the Baltimore fire, participated in the selection of a national standard.
The Original Consumer Reports

LTl

Americans have learned a lot from NIST over the years, from hov/ thermometers work to how to build a radio or conserve energy. The Institute's original consumer guide, Measurements

for the Household, was published in 1 915. The 149-

page guide, based on data gathered in technical studies, described the operation of common measuring appli- ances such as thermometers and clocks. About 1 0,000

copies were distributed in three months, more than 30

times the usual circulation of Institute publications of that

era. It was the first work of its kind. The journal Nature

called it a "a treatise on domestic science," the first to demonstrate "the place of science in practical affairs."

In 1917, NIST published Materials for the Household,

which in both style and content anticipated familiar modern publications such as Consumer Reports. Another

Institute guide. Safety for the Household, was first published in 1918 and showed, for example, the proper way

to use a fire extinguisher. These three circulars had a

great impact on the public; the Institute was besieged for years with requests for help with problems in the home.

In 1922, NIST fueled the national radio craze when it issued a series of mimeographed letter circulars describing how to build radios. The first one described how to construct a simple crystal detector set for $10; it was so popular that two commercial publishers reprinted it. In

1 923, the Institute issued How to Own Your Own Home,

which sold 100,000 copies the first week. It was

reprinted in magazines and serialized in newspapers

nationwide. NIST continued publishing consumer reports through

the late 1 970s. Its most popular reports of the later era focused on smoke detectors and how to achieve costeffective energy conservation in a particular home.
In

the early years of the 20th century,

electricity became the power behind

American industry. Electric utilities, appliaiice manufacturers, and communications companies proliferated. This was also the era of industrial development; Henry

Ford organized the first U.S. assembly line

in 1913. Most of the values for electrical units available to science and industry were

imprecise and tentative, so NIST performed

electrical research and testing. Thanks in part to this work, absolute electrical meas- urements became more accurate than was

generally believed possible. The Institute helped improve the accuracy of the values

established for the primary electrical units,

thereby helping industry make better products and supporting international redefini- tions of the ampere, ohm, and volt. NIST

also studied underground corrosion of gas mains and water pipes caused by the electric current flowing to city trolleys and came up with almost 20 methods of miti- gating this costly national problem.

NIST set to work saving money for the

federal government, which bought 1 million incandescent lamps per year and found

them quickly burning out. Tests on the lamps showed they did not conform to either the manufacturer's standards or federal specifications. Similar problems were found with a whole catalog of supplies. The

Institute tested

NIST conducted life testing research on

incandescent lamps as part of an effort to develop standards and specifications.

everything from an elevator cable for the Washington Monument to inks for the Government Printing Office. NIST also performed materials research. In the early years of the century, thousands

of train derailments were caused by broken

rails, broken wheels, flanges, and axles. From 1912 to 1923, NIST subjected failed parts to chemical, microscopic, and

mechanical tests and investigated railroad iron and steel constituents and manufacturing. The Institute reported that the steel industry had not established uniform practices in the manufacture of rails and wheels. By 1930, as better steel went into rails and

trains—with NIST's help in standardizing

materials and processing—the rate of acci- dents from these causes fell by two-thirds. Because the analysis of materials could not be separated from their synthesis, NIST

began to accjuire experimental factories to study the effects of manufacturing conditions on product quality. These factories became especially useful when World War I began in Europe in 1914. NIST was asked

to help address many military needs, from

experiments with concrete ships to the test- ing of various metals to the making of highprecision gage blocks needed to manufacture interchangeable parts. In some projects, the Institute introduced new fundamental principles and concepts of quantitative measurements to industry. By late 1917, shortly before the war ended in 1918, the military services were requesting some

sort of scientific work from the Institute every 20 minutes.

Among its accomplishments, NIST

helped modernize U.S. aviation. In the decade after the Wright brothers' first flight

in 1903, U.S. military forces had only several dozen aircraft, all obsolete by European

standards. All sorts of aviation instruments were sent to the Institute for testing, and

many were modified or overhauled entirely before being adopted by the military.

Institute studies yielded the first quantitative data reported anywhere on the powerproducing qualities of fuels. The first serious U.S. studies of the aerodynamics of flight were performed by NIST, which built a wind

tunnel with a 2.7 meter (9 foot) propeller

that was used to study wind stresses, airspeed

indicators, and other instruments.
Both before and after the war, NIST

carried out considerable basic research,

much of it involving the determination

and refinement of physical constants

quantities believed to be the same for all observers and for all time. Some of these were important in science, including stan- dards development, whereas others were needed by industry (the refrigeration

industr\-, for example, needed to know the

specific heat of ice) to improve products

and processes. By the end of the war, it was clear that scientific methods could

contribute to industrial technology', and

that fundamental science could have far- reaching consequences at some later time.

Industries expanded their scientific staffs; one legacy of World War 1 was new fields of industrial research. In its first two decades, NIST won an

international reputation for its achievements in physical measurements, stan- dards development, and test methods.

Through its standards of measurement,

instrumentation, and performance it sought to raise the scientific level of

industry-. The techniques of mass production introduced during the war gave an enormous impetus to the standardization

of methods and materials.

a d I O e c o m an Aid

Sailors and aviators owe a lot to the Institute, which during and

after World War I developed several radio technologies that made navigation much safer. Among the innovations was a radio direction finder (RDF), a

special antenna that determined the direction of radio transmissions. The original RDF was made by an Italian team, but NIST

researchers patented an improved design, built in 1916. It served

OS o prototype for the U.S. Navy and was used widely to pinpoint

the positions of enemy forces during the war. By the mid-1 920s,

many civilian vessels were outfitted with the "radio compass," as

it came to be known. The photograph above shows a radio compass and amplifier receiving signals from ships at sea.

In another application of the coil antenna, the Institute dis- proved the then-common notion that radio communication was

impossible underwater. In 1917, NIST placed an RDF under

water and received signals clearly; it then built a simple but effective radio apparatus for submarines.

The Institute's greatest contribution to navigation was probably the use of radio technology to make the first "visual type"

radio beacon for an instrument landing system, which enables on air crew to locate and land on a runway in poor visibility.

Indicators on the aircraft instrument panel recorded the signals

from strategically placed radio transmitters, enabling the pilot

to know the plane's approximate position in. three dimensions

at all times. The first "blind landing" relying entirely on radio

guidance was made in 1931 in College Park, Md. The principles of this design provide the basis for today's air traffic control systems worldwide.
NIST was one of the first radio broadcasters, initially

transmitting music and speech and then pioneering a market and crop report service. The purpose was

research, not entertainment; the Institute sought to overcome the technical limitations of this emerging

medium. A major problem with early radio was

poor reception, caused by interference among

stations that veered off assigned frequencies. To help stations control their transmissions, the

Institute estalished a standard of freI s^udit^y uiiu ~

began broadcasting precise frequency signals over

its laboratory transmitter, WWV, in 1 923. As shown

in the photo on the right, NIST radio station WWV

had two transmitting antenna towers in 1 923, a

short one (on the left) for short waves and another one for standard transmissions. It was the start of a

service that continues to this day; time signals were added in 1 945.

NIST also performed important research that

greatly improved understanding of why radio

reception sometimes fades out suddenly. After

collecting copious amounts of data, researchers

confirmed the underlying problem as solar activity,

later correlated with numbers of sunsoots. The

proved useful for decades.

Today, WWV and WWVB (in Colorado) and

sister station WV/VH (in Hawaii) serve radio and

television stations, power and telephone companies,

the financial community, scientists and engineers in many fields, computer networks, and navigators.

These NIST frequency services enable laboratories

to calibrate precision oscillators to an accuracy

much better than one-thousandth of a second in three years.
TheUnited States emerged from the Great War as a rich and powerful

nation. American Ufe changed

dramatically in the 1920s, which saw the

first trans-Atlantic phone call, the first movie with sound, the first enclosed car

at popular prices, and the discovery of

penicillin.

And suddenly everyone seemed to have

a radio. Radio had been a topic of research

interest at NIST since its early years, when

both the Army and Navy set up separate research facilities at its site to study wireless telegraphy. By the late 1920s there were hundreds of broadcasting stations and

nearly 10 million privately owned radio

sets in the United States, including quite a few that were handmade using instructions published by NIST. The Institute built the

first alternating-current (ac) radio set in 1922, years before commercial firms

offered ac-powered radios for the home

(earlier models were battery powered). The

Institute also helped train radio technicians, published early reference works, and

coordinated the writing of an academic

textbook that was admired by Thomas

Edison as "the greatest book on this subject

that I have ever read." Also booming in the 1920s were the

building and construction and automobile

industries, both of which received support

from the nation's principal physical science

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This car, rigged with two pistols, was

used to measure a motorist's reaction time in applying the brakes.

9
research laboratory. NIST recommended

revisions aimed at achieving greater unifor- mity in local building and plumbing codes

and zoning regulations and published a popular handbook for prospective home

buyers. NIST staff, in partnership with

Underwriters Laboratories and the

National Fire Protection Association,

began developing methods to test the fire endurance of building structures; this work

led to test procedures that became ubiqui- tous throughout the world. Automobile research focused on two

issues that would come to dominate the

history of this technology—fuel econ- omy and safety. Amid warnings that the

nation's known petroleum reserves would

be depleted in as little as 10 years, the

Institute helped conserve gasoline by

identifying the characteristics of engines,

fuels, and oils that enhanced operating

efficiency. To help establish safe driving

speeds, it also investigated brakes, the

braking ability of cars, and the reaction

time of drivers in applying brakes. Meanwhile, NIST became internationally known for its technical prowess. Radium, a radioactive element used in medical treatments, became so expensive

that its discoverer, Marie Curie, had a difficult time obtaining enough for her own

studies. American women raised money to buy some for her and, in 1921, Madame

Curie visited the United States to receive

a gram of radium from President Warren

Harding. It came with a certificate from

the Institute attesting to the purity and

radioactivity of the sample.

00

All the Beher to See You With

Relying on foreign technology is risky. The United

States learned this lesson early in the century when

it imported all its high-quality optical glass and

instruments, and World War I suddenly cut off the

supplies. The situation was so dire by 1 91 7, when

America entered the war, that citizens were asked to lend their binoculars and field glasses to the military. So NIST began studying the manufacture of

optical glass, a mixture of silica and chemicals

melted in a clay pot, which often deteriorated and

contaminated the glass. After more than a year's work, the researchers produced a superior clay

pot, greatly reducing the difficulty, time, and cost

of making these containers. The Institute made

nearly 7 metric tons (1 5,000 pounds) of eight

types of glass during the war, continuing its crucial research and production through WoHd War II and into the 1 950s. The most ambitious undertaking in the history of

the Institute's glass plant was the casting of a 1.8 meter (69.5 inch) disk— then the largest in the nation — for the mirror of a large reflecting tele- scope. No other U.S. plant was equipped to do it. Four disks were poured that cracked during cooling. The fifth one, poured in 1927 and pro- nounced a success the following year, was cooled

very slowly, by as little as 1 degree per day. The

1 .7 metric ton (3,800 pound) disk was subse- quently presented to Perkins Observatory at Ohio

Wesleyan University. This success influenced the Corning Glass Works in casting a 5 meter (200

inch) mirror for what became the largest optical

telescope in the world, at Palomar Observatory

in California.
While helping to enhance the quality of commercial products, the Institute also helped create new industries. After

German sources of cane and heet sugar

(sucrose) were cut off, for example, NIST

scientists recreated the manufacturing

processes to prepare small samples of corn

sugar (dextrose) and other rare sugars for standardization and testing purposes. They

also looked for ways to reduce costs, eventually developing a process for large-scale

manufacturing of almost chemically pure, low-cost dextrose, which then became an

industry unto itself. A spinoff of sugar

research was the discovery of practical uses

for process wastes. NIST developed products such as wall and insulating boards

made from cornstalks, an early example

of recycling.

Another way of making the most of American products was standards. High

quality made a difference, too. In the 1920s,

NIST standards became official federal standards, unifying the specifications of some 40 government purchasing agencies

and achieving greater economies in supplies. The Institute quickly prepared

specifications for items such as fire hoses,

pneumatic tires, and shoe sole leather and

recommended simplified practices, such as reducing the numJber of milk bottle designs

from 49 to nine. American industry saved

tens of millions of dollars through simplifi- cation. Standards also reduced the price of incandescent lamps from $1.30 to 16 cents. Then came the stock market crash in 1929

and the Great Depression, ending the cru- sade for a time.
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By

1932, U.S. unemployment reached

almost 25 percent of the labor force. Car sales slumped, nightclubs closed,

and hobbies boomed. NIST incurred substantial cuts in research funding and staff. Some professional staff refused their imposed furloughs, preferring to work with- out pay. Because industry called on NIST

(and national laboratories abroad) less often than before, the Depression years were a time of international conferences,

interlaboratory comparisons, and ex- changes of data and equipment looking to develop new or improved international standards. For instance, NIST and an

industry standards association agreed on a new ratio between the inch and the mil- limeter so that precision measurement

would be on the same basis in England and

the United States, an aid to American

exporters.

Despite cutbacks in industrial research,

many fundamental studies, such as the development of photometric units (for measuring visible light according to the

sensitivity of the human eye) and research on radiation and spectroanalysis, advanced

during these years. This work was useful to

both science and industry and won wide

acknowledgment. Some NIST research in applied technology was terminated; there was a continuing debate over how far the

Institute should venture into these areas. But it did venture into uncharted terri- tory nonetheless. The advances in aero- nautics and radio in the 1920s led to a period of worldwide exploration during

the 1930s, with trips to Antarctica and

balloon flights into the stratosphere sponsored by the National Geographic Society. In 1936 from the USSR, NIST made the

first natural-color photographs ever of a

total solar eclipse, using a custom-made

camera and lens. Many precision measure- ments then were being made in terms of

light waves. With international agreement on definitions and advances in spectroscopy enabling the search for superior

types of light for this purpose, it was hoped

that many difficulties impeding the international interchangeability of parts might be

solved. NIST developed a method for the

use of cadmium and krypton wavelengths in the measurement of precision gage blocks

that permitted their certification to an

accuracy three times better than before.

First, Do No Harm

Radiation has been used in medical diagnosis and treat- ment throughout the century. But it was not until NIST became involved in providing physical measurement

standards for radiation that this tool could be relied on

to do more good than harm.

Early in the century, technicians operated X-ray equip- ment empirically— and without lead shielding — at some- what arbitrary voltages. The need for standard dosages

became clear after World War I, with wider use of more

powerful X-ray apparatus for cancer therapy and fre- quent injuries to equipment operators. There also was

concern about radium, a radioactive element used in surgery and dermatology that began appearing in con- sumer products.

In 1 926, the Radiological Society of North America

asked NIST to determine national standards for radium

and X-rays used in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. The Institute developed the new standard for X- ray exposure, which could be measured precisely, and

produced the first quantitative data on X-ray doses in

this country. Working through a national committee,

NIST helped bring about the 1 931 X-ray safety code,

which set guidelines for the shielding of operating rooms and high-voltage equipment and for protective

devices for patients and operators.

Radiation measurement work continues today. In the 1 970s, NIST set up a program to assure accurate doses of radioactively tagged drugs used to diag- nose or treat disease. The program tightened the sys- tem for measuring dosages and, according to an economic analysis, has a benefit-to-cost ratio of 97

to 1 . NIST currently provides national standards for the 1 1,000 U.S. mammography facilities and is the only laboratory in the world offering an advanced

calibration service — based on a radiation detector 100 times more sensitive than the previous one — for checking the radiation dose in seeds used to treat prostate cancer.

12 II
Within a few years of its founding, NIST

purchased a hydrogen liquefier and

began research on cryogenics, a branch

of physics dealing with the production and

effects of very low temperatures. Over the

century, this research has contributed to

scientific, military, aerospace, industrial, and medical fields.

First, the Institute devised a standard

method of producing liquid and solid hydrogen at a temperature of about

-259 °C (-434 °F), not far above

absolute zero. In 1931, using the same

apparatus, NIST produced America's

first liquefied helium (the coolant used

decades later in magnetic resonance

imaging, or MRI). By mid-century, NIST was established as the federal expert

on cryogenic engineering and published the classic book on the subject.

In the 1 950s, NIST designed and

constructed the world's largest hydrogen liquefier for the Atomic Energy

Commission's nuclear fusion devices.

The liquefier provided liquid fuel for the

first hydrogen bomb, which was tested

successfully. The Institute also began

providing data and models to the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration (NASA), which wanted

liquid hydrogen for use as missile and

satellite fuel. For the University of California at Berkeley, NIST helped

construct a liquid hydrogen "bubble

chamber" (see photo above)— the

largest ever at the time— Iqter used in

Nobel Prize-winning research by

physicist Luis Alvarez . To meet the needs of industry, NIST

gathered data on other cryogenic fluids used in steel and glass manufacturing,

freezing of food, and other processes.

Institute research on cryogenic refrigerators led to commercialization of this technology, which is used in NASA and

Air Force satellites. In addition, NIST

research on critical currents in superconductors has contributed to the design of superconducting magnets used in MRI

systems and other applications.
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The Nation's Crime Laboratory

For about two decades, NIST was the principal U.S. crime

laboratory. The investigations were led by Wilmer Souder, a

scientist who became interested in crime detection in about

1 91 3. By the early 1 930s, he was participating in 50 to 75

federal investigations annually involving extortion, kidnaping,

forgery, and other crimes.

His most famous case was the kidnaping of aviator Charles

Lindbergh's baby in 1932. Souder was one of several handwriting experts who independently identified the ransom

notes as having been written by Bruno Richard Hauptmann,

who after his conviction in 1935 reportedly said: "Dot handwriting was the worstest thing against me." When the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) hired its

first scientist in 1932, Souder helped establish the new crime

lab and lectured the trainees on various investigative tech- niques. When he retired from NIST in 1954, The Washington

Posf called him "one of the nation's best but ... least known

criminologists."

NIST continues to assist law enforcement agencies. More

than a dozen law enforcement standards have been issued

since the early 1970s. One of them, a standard for ballistic resistance of police body armor, is used by companies that

sell bullet-resistant armor to police and the military world- wide. Not a single police officer wearing body armor made

to these specifications has been killed by penetration or

blunt trauma. NIST also has worked with the FBI for more than 30 years

to improve fingerprint screening. After helping to design the

first hardware for that purpose, in 1 995 NIST created the

first successful computer program that automatically classifies about 80 of 100 fingerprints into five categories. In addition.

Institute researchers wrote standards for the exchange of fin- gerprint data among agencies, enabling real-time electronic

distribution of images and information that has accelerated

judicial processes.

NIST began a tradition of

contributing to Nobel Prize- winning research by other

scientists when its cryogenics lab was used to confirm

the existence of deuterium,

or "heavy hydrogen." This

isotope of hydrogen was

discovered by a guest

researcher, who subsequently won the Nobel

Prize in chemistry. A

NIST scientist separated

the isotope. These scientists expected

that deuterium would be useful for research or practical devices such as neon signs; they had no idea that it would later become a vital ingredient

in the making of nuclear bombs.

In work of interest to the general

public, NIST supported the consumers' movement of the 1930s by

advising consumer labs on test instru- ments and equipment and devising new ones. Following magazine articles and publicity about its work, NIST

was deluged with letters from the

public asking for assistance on all types of problems, from increasing

the birth rate of pigs to obtaining

devices to locate buried treasure. In a single three-day period in 1939,

almost 800 letters arrived requesting

technical information, along with a similar number of telephone calls, 459 letters asking for publications,

and 429 visitors asking for scientific or technical information.

14
To help out the Weather Bureau and

Navy, NIST built a radiosonde, a

balloon-borne instrument that greatly

increased the range and quantity of

available v/eather data. Effective up to

heights of 24 kilometers (15 miles) or more and distances up to 322 kilometers (200 miles), the radiosonde transmitted continuous data on cloud height

and thickness, temperature, pressure, and other phenomena. By 1 940, it was

an integral part of U.S. v/eather forecasting, and some 35,000 units were

being built each year. In 1 938, NIST

developed a device that made possible,

for the first time, accurate measurements of humidity. Radiosondes still are used today.
Synthetic rubber became a precious

commodity during World War II when

imports of natural rubber from the Far

East were cut off. Indeed, natural rubber became so rare in the United States

that gasoline was rationed to discourage people from driving cars (which, of

course, ran on rubber tires). Ultimately,

the nation spent as much on its rubber

program as it did on the atomic bomb.

NIST helped win the rubber battle in

several ways. As the government pur- chased any natural rubber it could find from South and Central America and

Africa, NIST set up a lab to test and

grade these rubbers and helped the

Brazilian government organize its own

lab to do the same.

The U.S. government also organized a consortium to study synthetic rubbers

and invested in the construction of 15

production plants, which had to pro- duce rubber that met uniform specifications. Prewar NIST work on the thermodynamics of rubber suggested which

types of synthetics to use and how to

test them.

Beginning in 1 943, the Institute helped standardize both physical and

chemical testing, resulting in a notable

improvement ih the accuracy of rubber

testing. NIST also helped develop tests

(such as the use of freezing points to determine material purity) and improve

instruments (such as the viscometer)

later used in synthetic rubber plants.

Today, the U.S. syrithetic rubber

industry reports more than $4.5 billion

in annual shipments, and the nation

exports substantial amounts of these

materials.
Science and technology assumed

paramount importance during

World War II, as illustrated most

dramatically by the development of the

atomic bomb.

Just before the war, scientists found

that, by bombarding uranium atoms with

neutrons, they could split the nucleus,

releasing huge amounts of energy. Fearing

that the Germans would be the first to discover how to put nuclear fission to

practical use, Albert Einstein, along with

Leo Szilard of Columbia University, sent a

letter to President Franklin Roosevelt,

explaining the significance of the experi- ments and the need to be first in overcoming

this challenge. The letter was transmitted

shortly after Germany started the war by

invading Poland.

President Roosevelt consulted NIST

Director Lyman J. Briggs, his principal official counselor on scientific matters, and

then appointed an advisory committee

chaired by Briggs to look into the question

of uranium fission. The committee reported

that the energy produced might be

useful for a new explosive as well as a new power source for submarines.

In early 1940, the first funds were made available for research on what became the atomic bomb.

While many university

scientists studied different aspects of the problem,

dozens of NIST staff members carried out important

initial research. The Institute served as a central control lab

for determination of the properties of uranium; the staff also found a way to remove virtually

all impurities from uranium

oxide and developed analytical

procedures for controlling the

purity of critical materials used in nuclear reactors and bombs.

Eventually, development and engineering tasks were transferred to the military's

Manhattan Project.

The bomb work was classified. By

1940—before the United States officially

entered the war—NIST had so many confidential projects under way that Briggs

obtained authority to close the street run- ning through the campus, and fences went

up around the grounds. By 1943, the entire

staff was engaged in war work. They cali- brated gage blocks; tested quartz crystals

used in radio equipment; made effective coatings for everything from munitions to matches; developed new metal alloys;

designed carbon monoxide indicators for fighter plane cockpits; and tested new plastic products and textiles. In addition,

researchers developed a method for making

special paper for war maps that was used

extensively, one of many NIST achievements over the years in paper research (including techniques for making durable U.S. currency).

The war also drew NIST into the increas- ingly important field of electronics. NIST

weapons research led to a contractor's

development of printed circuits, which

substituted printed wiring, resistors, and

coils for the conventional discrete components in electronic devices. This technology

contributed to a new field of electronic

miniaturization for which the Institute provided useful engineering data and components. Among its contributions, NIST

built a rotary printer that applied printed

circuits on either flat or cylindrical surfaces. During and after the war, federal officials came to recognize the importance of sup- porting the basic research that made useful applications of science and technology

possible. At the same time, research costs became so great that government support was critical to the nation. NIST was thus a key player in the scientific revolution,

along with new federal institutions such as the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.

Early "Smart" Weapons Go to War

NIST helped the Allies win World War II by assisting with numerous military projects, most notably the design

of two early "smart" weapons systems. One was a fuse that exploded a projectile when

directly over its target, rather than on impact, making

the weapon five to 20 times more effective. The "radio proximity fuse" designed by NIST was a tiny radio

transmitter and receiver about the size of a lightbulb,

powered by batteries or generators. Variations on the device were designed for rockets, shells, and bombs.

Hundreds of workers spent several years perfecting the technology, first tested in early 1 941

.

The fuse, often described as a leading technical advance of the wartime period, was not released for general use until 1 944. Mortar shell fuses did not go

into full production, but fuses for rockets and bombs

went into full production and were used extensively. The

first major combat use of the fuse was during the pre- invasion bombardment of Iwo Jima in 1 945. Some 8.3

million fuses were produced. NIST also helped design and construct the Bat, the first

fully automated guided missile ever used successfully in combat. In addition to coordinating civilian agencies'

work on the Bat, NIST worked out the aerodynamic and

stabilization characteristics of the 454 kilogram (1 ,000

pound) missile, which emitted shortwave radiation and was guided by the radar echoes of the enemy target. In addition to its self-guidance capability, the Bat was

known for its long range, high accuracy, and high

payload. It was used in the Pacific theater

17
After the war ended in 1945,

Americans confronted price inflation, labor strikes, and shortages of food, cars, and homes. But the situation improved rapidly, as the shortages were remedied by expanding industries. Veterans

received low-interest home loans and a building (and baby) boom began. New

technologies, such as jet aircraft and the

transistor, entered the marketplace, trans- forming the U.S. economy and way of life. The next external threat was seen in Communism. The phrase "Cold War" was

coined in 1947; two years later, an atomic

device was detonated by the USSR. In 1950, Communist North Korea invaded

South Korea. The U.S. participation in these conflicts sustained public funding of science. For national defense projects,

NIST accjuired many new tools, including an early electron microscope for research

in metallurgy and electron optics; a mass

spectrometer for measuring nuclear masses; and an ultrasonic laboratory for using

sound waves to study the properties of

gases and liquids.

NIST was a natural leader in the new

science of instrumentation. An underwater

velocimeter developed with the Navy

became the standard instrument for record- ing speed-of-sound profiles in the ocean; it had many tactical uses, such as in sonar, and also was used by oceanographic institutions. In addition to inventing research instruments, the Institute served as a corporate lab for the government by developing

practical tools such as a physiological monitor that sensed blood pressure, heart, and

respiration; free-floating weather buoys

that broadcast data on wind, pressure, and

temperature and were operable in hurri- canes; and an electronic currency counter,

The Atomic Age'' of Time Begins

Time took on a new look and a new role at mid-century, and NIST, which maintains the nation's primary time standards, played a lead- ing role in the transition. From the pendulum to the quartz clock, timekeeping had improved

in the past. But NIST's operation of the first atomic clock in 1 949 led to giant leaps in accuracy. Atomic clocks are based on the resonances,

or vibrations, of atoms or molecules. (Some have called NIST's inno- vation a molecular clock, because it was based on resonances in the ammonia molecule, which contains four atoms. But the principle is the same.) NIST's achievements in this field later were cited as advancing

the research of three 1 989 Nobel Prize winners. The performance of the Institute's original clock was only slightly better than existing standards, but the precedent was set. Attention then

shifted to the cesium atom, which by 1 960 was incorporated into the world's official timekeeping system. Cesium clocks now keep time to an

accuracy of about one second in 20 million years. These advances in performance of atomic clocks have supported the development of new

technologies, such as high data rate telecommunications and the Global Positioning System. Accurate timekeeping will become even more important in the future as the speed of electronic systems increases, requiring commensurate improvements in levels of synchronization.

Today, NIST's atomic clocks are used for many purposes, including

the synchronization of Los Angeles traffic lights and guidance of deep space probes. The National Association of Securities Dealers

requires that all electronic transactions be stamped with a time trace- able to NIST. An Internet time service that allows users to synchronize

their computers' internal clocks with NIST's atomic clock was receiving

30 million "hits" per day as of mid-2000, and the number was

growing rapidly.
To guard against deterioration, the

original parchment manuscripts of the

Declaration of Independence, the

Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were

sealed using a preservation technique

developed at NIST in cooperation with

the Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass

Company and Library of Congress.

The helium-filled cases are still in use. Today, NIST is involved in a project

ith the National Archives to transfer

the Charters of Freedom to argon-filled

enclosures, allowing for the use of advanced measurement techniques to monitor conditions inside the glass.

Safeguarding the Charters of Freedom
o

C/5

President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered

the dedication address at NIST's campus in Boulder, Colo., in September 1954.

estimated to save the government almost a quarter of a million dollars annually.

Perhaps the most important new tool was

the computer. An automated electronic computing project was established at NIST

in 1946, about the time that the Electronic

Numerical Integrator and Automatic

Computer (ENIAC), the first all-purpose

electronic computer, began operating at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1947, NIST

began building computers for other govern- ment agencies; these machines would be

used for tasks such as predicting radioactive

fallout after a nuclear explosion. The

Institute also began building an "interim

computer" for itself. This machine, the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer,

was successful enough to become a fullscale machine and one of NIST's major

achievements in computing. NIST staff members also developed a mathematical

algorithm, used to solve very large systems

of linear equations, that nearly 50 years

later would be named one of the top 10

algorithms of the century by a computing

trade journal. In 1950, NIST still was based in the

District of Columbia, but it also had work

under way at 23 other locations. For example, it operated four stations for cement

testing in Pennsylvania, Washington,

Colorado, and California; two proving

grounds for weapons testing in Maryland

and New Jersey; a railway scale test car based

in Illinois; a station to certify government

purchases in Massachusetts; and nine field

stations for studying radio wave propagation

spanning the northern hemisphere, from

Alaska to Hawaii. The need for additional laboratory space led to the establishment of

a cryogenic engineering laboratory' and radio

facilities in Boulder, Colo., on an 89 hectare (220 acre) tract donated by citizens. NIST research was equally far flung.

Continuing its early studies of underground

corrosion, NIST exposed specimens of

materials in 128 test sites around the

nation, representing all major types of U.S.

soils. Metal samples were buried, periodically unearthed, and assessed. By the 1950s, these studies had extended to other types of environmental corrosion. In 1957, a report was published on the underground sites that became virtually indispensable to the corrosion engineer. In the following years, NIST continued to help American con-
NIST Is Tested— AND Wins

Testing of commodities purchased by the federal government, a very small part of NIST's work after World War II, led to one of the Institute's biggest

controversies and some of the earliest debates on the role of science in public policy. Before the episode ended with the NIST's vindication in 1 953, there were

attacks on the Institute's technical work, investigations by two high-level

committees, hearings before a U.S. Senate committee, debates over the defi- nition of scientific truth, the forced resignation of Director Allen Astin (later reinstated) and a staff mutiny over it, and the resignation of an Assistant Secretary of Commerce.

It all began innocently enough. As part of its long-term research on batteries, NIST tested batteries and additives for other units of the government. No

additive was ever found to be beneficial. NIST did not ordinarily name commercial products, endorse them, or permit its tests to be used for advertising, but a series of events (including a request from a senator) converged to require tests of a battery additive marketed as AD-X2.

The manufacturer claimed AD-X2 would improve lead-acid battery per- formance and, under some circumstances, revive a dead battery. NIST's laboratory tests found the product was not effective. But there were many

satisfied users, and it was suggested that the government was persecuting a

small manufacturer, which incidentally had some strong allies. For a time, these allies appeared to include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

which ran its own tests. After many tense months, the controversy was finally resolved when a

committee of the National Academy of Sciences — the nation's highest

scientific authority— supported NIST's findings on AD-X2. Furthermore, the Academy found that the Institute's work on this case had advanced the science of electrochemistry by at least a decade. Through it all, NIST

maintained its integrity in the face of intense public scrutiny.

2a > ft( T

Better Dental Tools and

Materials

Nobody likes visiting the dentist, but it could be worse. For instance, getting a

cavity fixed would take longer and be more uncomfortable if those drills were much slower, as they were in the 1 940s

before researchers at NIST made the prototype for today's high-speed drills. As part of an Institute collaboration

with the American Dental Association (ADA), researchers developed the hydraulic turbine dental handpiece,

which attained a speed of 61 ,000 revolutions per minute— almost 10 times that of a conventional drill— without vibrating or overheating. This 1953 invention inspired the later development of air turbines, which set the stage for even higher

speeds. The hydraulic handpiece, which was given to the Smithsonian Institution in 1964, had an almost unimaginable

benefit-to-cost ratio of 27,000 to 1

,

according to an estimate made in the

1 960s. Not to mention happier patients.

The drill was just one product of the collaboration with the ADA, which began

in 1 928 and continues today. In the

1 940s, researchers found the first explanation of post-operative pain (delayed

excessive expansion of dental amalgam),

thus making it possible to eliminate the pain. In the 1 950s, the team developed a panoramic X-ray machine (see photo

above), which made it possible to take a

picture of the whole mouth with only one

exposure, significantly reducing the radi- ation doses to oral tissues. It remains in use today by the military and many dentists. And the development of composite

filling materials and dental adhesives has been important both aesthetically and

economically.

21
sumers and industry combat corrosion,

estimated to he a problem costing $70 bil- lion annually by the early 1970s.

Internationally renowned for its expertise

in this field, NIST has worked on corro- sion projects of all types and scales, from

helping the nation of Kuwait understand

and eliminate the development of holes

in its water pipes to suggesting alternative

materials to solve corrosion problems at the White House. As new industries evolved in the post- war era, innovative measurement tech- niques were needed. In 1955, an Institute electronics scientist was assigned a $10,000

project to determine what support could be

provided to the transistor industry. An

early problem was the measurement of

silicon resistivity, a key property of semiconductors governing device design and

manufacturing. Measurement discrepancies within and between companies were

too great for acceptable quality control, so NIST developed a non-destructive

measurement method that was an order of magnitude better than existing practice.

This work provided the basis for five industrial standards and produced economic

benefits to industry exceeding 100 times

the cost of the research; it also established

a NIST partnership with the semiconductor industry that continues to this day.

Pioneering Modular Electronics

Tinkertoy meant a lot more than child's play at NIST in 1 953, when

a project named after the toy construction sets mechanized the pro- duction of modular electronics, a step toward the ubiquitous

microelectronics of today.

Project Tinkertoy was intended to help ensure national preparedness in emergencies by drastically reducing production lead time and

enabling rapid conversions from civilian to military products. The

Navy selected NIST to lead the project because it offered the "most advanced state of processed circuitry." The Institute already had

developed a modular design concept and engaged in pioneering

work in printed electronic circuits.

In Tinkertoy, automatic machinery attached basic electronic components to ceramic wafers and stacked the wafers into modules, which

then were assembled into complete units. The modules were compact

and reliable— so rugged that a demonstration radio could be flung

against a wall and still play. NIST performed the basic research and

development and designed a pilot plant; various companies designed

and built the equipment and ran the production line. The manufacturing cost was estimated to be 44 percent lower than conventional

processes. Dubbed the outstanding development of 1 953 by the journal of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the Tinkertoy process was used

to make sonar buoys for detecting enemy submarines. The project also contributed to the development of the first metal-ceramic vacuum

tubes. But the fabrication equipment was complex, and the concept was quickly supplanted by transistors and printed circuit boards, to which some of the individual Tinkertoy components were applied.
An ellipsometer was used to investigate the role of thin films in corrosion.

Tests performed with this mechanical

comparator provided data on the stability of gage blocks developed by NIST.

Profitable Ideas: The First ''^Reading Machine"

Jacob Rabinow could turn just about any idea into a

functional piece of equipment. So it was with his reading

machine, one of about 230 inventions patented by the NIST

engineer and the forerunner of the optical scanners used by

banks and post offices today. Cited as his best-known

invention by the Lemelson-MIT Prize program, which hon- ored Rabinow in 1998 for his lifetime achievements, the

original reading machine is on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution. Rabinow got the idea for machine reading, or "optical character recognition," when a friend went blind in the late

1 930s. Later, he convinced his boss at NIST to let him build a reading machine. The resulting machine read the alphanumeric output of a portable typewriter, pioneering

the "best match" approach by comparing each character on a printout to the entire alphabet and determining which

letter was most similar "It enabled us to read very poor

printing that could not be read by any other means,"

Rabinow said. The machine read one character per minute— to the cheering of onlookers. By comparison, today's machines

can recognize up to 10,000 characters per second.

The reading machine is just one of many novel technologies nurtured by NIST, which long has encouraged

innovation by industry and the public as well as its own

staff. NIST took on an official role in encouraging private- sector innovation in 1 940, when it was assigned to support

the National Inventors Council (NIC), formed by the Secretary of Commerce to promote defense-oriented invention. NIST performed evaluations through 1964. During

those years, more than 340,000 ideas were evaluated by

the NIC, and many were referred to defense agencies for support; the mercury battery for "walkie-talkies" was a

notable result. From 1 964 through 1 974 NIST provided an

information and referral service for inventors.

Legislative action in 1 975 again assigned the Institute a

similar official role, this time in encouraging energy-related

invention. From 1 975 through 1 998 under the EnergyRelated Inventions Program, NIST solicited and evaluated more than 32,000 ideas, recommending more than 700

for U.S. Department of Energy support. By 1 998, NIST- recommended inventions reaching the marketplace had

generated more than $1 billion in sales and saved sufficient energy to light 10 million homes for a year.

23
The rules of physics were rewritten when

a difficult experiment at NIST showed,

strikingly and convincingly, that in at

least one fundamental physical process,

the world is distinguishable from its mirror image. Physicists long had

assumed the opposite, constructing their

theories so that the corresponding

mathematical property, parity, remained

unaltered in all subatomic processes. Thus, this experiment brought about "the

fall of parity" from the ranks of well- conserved physical quantities such as energy and momentum. The results

verified theoretical work in quantum

mechanics that won physicists at Princeton and Columbia universities the Nobel Prize in physics. The experiment

at NIST was conducted by (pictured, left

to right) Ralph Hudson, Ernest Ambler,

Dale Hoppes, Raymond Hayward, and

(not pictured) Chien-Shiung Wu of

Columbia Universi
The new age of science and technology

challenged the Institute to provide a host of new fundamental physical standards, physical constants, and standard reference data. A standard was developed to measure the emission rate and flux associated with neutron sources, greatly improving accuracy and making interlaboratory comparisons

possible. This standard proved valuable in the operation of nuclear reactors and in conducting neutron irradiation research,

such as that later, performed at NIST. A

small device called an omegatron was

developed, enabling scientists to determine

the value of the Faraday constant—which

is basic to the definitioti of the ampere

using a high-precision physical method

instead of electrochemical experiments.

And an Institute compilation of accurate

values for the thermodynamic properties of many compounds, in a format that allowed

prediction of the outcome of thousands of chemical reactions, became immensely

important in industry as well as scientific

research and education; government efforts

to develop high-performance rocket engines,

for instance, drew heavily on these data. The 1950s saw a steady increase in highrise housing, office buildings, and federal buildings throughout the United States. NIST addressed many aspects of building

technology, including new structural

designs, structural strength, fire resistance, acoustics and sound insulation, heating,

ventilation, air conditioning, and building

and electrical equipment. Research on

thermal insulation led to the evaluation of aluminum foil reflective insulation and was

partially responsible for the wide accept- ance of glass wool insulation with an

aluminum-foil/paper surface. In 1957, NIST coordinated data collec- tion for the International Geophysical

Year, which involved as many as 20,000

scientists from 67 countries in a study of the Earth and its atmosphere. The year was

chosen to coincide with a period of maximum sunspot activity. The Institute

Pioneering Computer Launches New Era

Humming along at 1 megahertz and offering 6,000 bytes of storage, NISTs Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) was a marvel

at the dawn of the computer era, introducing many "firsts" and

demonstrating early applications of the technology that defined the

late 20th century. Dedicated in 1 950, SEAC was the first operational,

internally programmed digital computer in the United States. It served

the government for more than 1 3 years, handling tasks such as Air Force planning. Social Security accounting, and checking of calculations for the design of the hydrogen bomb.

Its engineering innovations included electric typewriters and retooled

teletype machines as input-output mechanisms, new memory mechanisms using ultrasonic technology, and a graphical display that produced the first computerized image in 1 957. To input that image, NIST researchers built the first scanner, a simple rotating drum to trace variations in intensity over the surfaces of photographs.

When a 5 centimeter (2 inch) square picture of NIST engineer

Russell Kirsch's son was scanned into SEAC, it launched the field of image processing, which today has applications ranging from satellite imaging to desktop publishing. Kirsch also demonstrated early artificial intelligence and timesharing applications and wrote the first "picture grammar" (programming rules for combining pieces of a picture to form a complete image).

25
o

00

Achievements in Spectroscopy Pay Off

Much of what is known about the universe has been learned through spectroscopy, a technique for identifying and characterizing the substances present in stars and other objects based on the

characteristics of the emitted light, which depend on the energy lev- els of the atoms. And much of what is known about spectroscopy can be attributed to NIST. Among its greatest contributions is Atomic Energy Levels, three volumes published between 1949 and

1 958, which are still considered models of authenticated, verified, consistent data. Earlier compilations were incomplete and inadequate for many applications. NIST's highly reliable data had a swift impact on, for example,

the development of gas lasers. Arthur Schawlow, who with Charles Townes wrote the 1 958 paper that launched the laser

field, credited the data with assisting the pair in their early selection of materials that could lose. "The [NIST] tables have been,

and are continuing to be, essential tools in the search for new

laser materials and new wavelengths," Schawlow wrote in 1 971

.

(Both men won Nobel Prizes for other scientific achievements.) In

all, the NIST volumes have been cited by others about 13,000

times, more than enough to be considered "citation classics." The data were compiled by Charlotte Moore, one of few professional women at NIST in those days, with great persistence, initiative, and attention to detail. Under the direction of William F. Meggers, she gathered published and unpublished data from

many sources and, when data were missing, located the appropriate experts and asked them for help. Her work served as a model

for NIST's more recent atomic data compilations, which have

included a fourth volume of energy levels for the rare-earth ele- ments published in 1978.

received visual, optical, photographic, photometric, and radio observations of the solar

activity from all over the world and maintained a constant account of the state of the

sun. During periods of unusual activity, alerts were sent to scientists across the globe. The

Institute also performed scientific studies of the ionosphere and radio propagation as well

as satellite observations. Within 12 hours

after Russia launched Sputnik I, NIST modified existing equipment to receive signals

from the satellite.

A NIST research team invented the diamondanvil apparatus, which can compress samples to ——— ultrahigh pressures. The

designers used single-crystal

diamonds (confiscated by the

U.S. Customs Service) as the compressing surfaces because of their great hardness and trans- parency to light. Similar devices, together with a

technique developed at NIST for measuring

pressures inside the sample chamber, are use today by scientists worldwide. Applications

include studies of the effects of pressure on

solids, liquids, and gases using a wide variet

of scientific measurement techniques,,
NIST made this mercury lamp available to science and industry as an ultimate standard of length in 1 951 . Length measurements were based on the circular "interference fringes" seen in the background.
QTQ

The 1960s were a time of social tur- moil, marked by the civil rights

movement, political assassinations, the Vietnam War, and the antiwar movement. But it was a golden age for science,

with ample funding and broad industrial and public support.

The launch of the satellite Sputnik I in 1957 precipitated the space race. The

National Aeronautics and Space

Administration was formed, and, in May

1961, President John F. Kennedy committed the nation to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the

Earth. The U.S. space program required new measurements of the combustion of

missile fuels and of rocket thrust in the

million-pounds range, as well as the effects

of extreme and sudden changes in temperature and pressure on materials and

mechanisms of rocket engines. NIST was

OnO

Automating the Census

Without realizing it, most Americans adults likely have had some of

their household information scrutinized by FOSDIC.

The Film Optical Sensing Device for Input to Computers, v/hich scanned microfilm of handmarked forms and converted the markings

into electronic form, was developed by NIST for the U.S. Bureau of the Census in the early 1 950s. Updated versions of the device processed data collected in the censuses held every 10 years from 1960 until

1 990, introducing automation to this massive survey. Before FOSDIC, census data were key-punched into cards. FOSDIC

enabled the switch to multiple-choice documents and, by 1 970, self- enumeration by the public, a cost-saving measure. Scanning with a

cathode ray tube under the direction of a computer program, the first FOSDIC translated up to 10 million "answer positions" per hour into computer input. The last model used in the 1 990

census operated at 20 times this rate. Twelve different versions of FOSDIC were developed

and put into service from 1954 through 1998. Various

models were used by or for federal agencies to process data on fallout shelters, atmospheric pollutants, medical

records, postal mail volume, and other surveys. The

machines also were used to scan microfilms of

archival weather data and special films made in underwater instruments. Among census-related

applications, the machines collected data on which

the nation's unemployment figures were based for more than 30 years.

28

I

Today's scientists compete for tinrie on

synchrotrons— large, donut-shaped

facilities that produce a unique type of s

radiation. The technology is used, for example, to analyze protein structures

as a basis for designing new drugs.

But back in 1 961 , this research tool

v^as little more than a curiosity outside

of NIST, where the first regular experi- ments using synchrotron light were

carried out. Synchrotron radiation is emitted by

electrons that are accelerated in a

magnetic field. In the early 1 950s,

NIST found itself with an electron

accelerator that another federal lab

did not want. At the time, physicists were most interested in the particles
(electrons) circulating in the device. It was also known that the electrons emitted light, which interested NIST because

of the potential for an absolute radiometric standard— in effect, a "national stan- dard light bulb." Among its advantages,

the radiation is continuous across the spectrum and can be "tuned" to the

desired wavelength.

Robert Madden, who became director

of the Institute's Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility (SURF), was hired in 1961 along with another spectroscopist,

Keith Codling, to develop the NIST

facility into a light source. Their

groundbreaking studies of the energyabsorption spectrum of helium, and later

I j other noble gases (neon, argon, krypton, and xenon), revealed new interaction mechanisms among the gases, radiation, and free electrons. The results

startled scientists around the world and

influenced the direction of atomic

physics for some time. The research also

affected fields such as astrophysics,

where the new processes had to be

taken into account in stellar models.

Perhaps most importantly. Madden and

Codling proved how useful synchrotron

radiation could be. An upgraded SURF remains in opera

tion today, supporting work by the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration and the microelectronics

industry.
rD

o

>

QTQ

This universal testing machine has been

used, for example, to test the performance

of concrete columns under simulated earthquake conditions.

already working on such problems as a

result of the Army's first supersonic flight in the late 1940s. Measurement capabilities were extended

to new realms. In the 1950s, NIST could measure temperatures reliably only up to 3000 "'C; by 1964, thanks to improved

instmments and techniques, it was routinely

measuring in the 20,000 '^C range. To cali- brate the devices used to measure the forces on large rockets, giant machines were built, such as a 4-5 meganewton (1 million

pound) force machine that was 29.3 meters

(96 feet) tall. The device to be calibrated was set at the top of a loading frame, and

weights as heavy as 23 metric tons (50,000

pouiids) were loaded in increments; the

applied force was calculated from the mass

of the weights. NIST still has the nation's

largest universal testing machine, capable

of supplying 53.4 MN (12 million pounds)

of force in compression.

Meanwhile, the Institute continued to provide leadership in measurements and

standards. The National Standard Reference

Data System, centered at NIST, was established by law to provide critically evaluated

quantitative data on the properties of chemical substances and materials importarit to science and technology. A key

feature of the program was the independent

assessment of the accuracy of data published in the scientific literature. In 1960, the international scientific community adopted a new standard of length, replacing the old platinum-iridium meter bar with a wavelength of a specific

frequency of visible light. (An Institute invention of the 1940s was influential in demonstrating the precision and practicality of a wavelength standard of length.)

The new measure was based on atomic

properties and could be reproduced with

great accuracy, whereas the meter bar could be damaged or change over time. Shortly thereafter, NIST designed and

built one of the first fully automated measuring machines, an interferometer (which

used wavelengths of light as the unit of measure) for calibrating the intervals on

OS

4^

Mathematics Handbook Becomes Best Seller

From making a military map to explaining the knock in gasoline

engines or the light scattering that produces a rainbow, many

technical and scientific challenges are best solved with the aid of mathematical functions. Such functions are so important that a

national project devoted to compiling tables of them was established

in the late 1 930s. Thus began a NIST tradition of publishing

mathematics reference data. The invention of computers threatened to make the tables obsolete. But at a national conference in 1 954, it was agreed that computers merely changed how the tables should be designed.

For instance, for use in programming computers, the figures would

need to be more accurate than before. So Milton Abramowitz and

Irene A. Stegun of NIST produced an updated compendium, an

effort that took eight years. More than 1 ,000 pages long, the Handbook of Mathematical

Functions was first published in 1 964 and reprinted many times, with

yet another reprint in 1 999. Its influence on science and engineering

is evidenced by its popularity. In fact, when New Scientist magazine

recently asked some of the world's leading scientists what single

book they would want if stranded on a desert island, one distin- guished British physicist said he would take the Handbook.

The Handbook is likely the most widely distributed and most cited NIST technical publication of all time. Government sales exceed

1 50,000 copies, and an estimated three times as many have been

reprinted and sold by commercial publishers since 1 965. During the mid-1 990s, the book was cited every 1 .5 hours of each working

day. And its influence will persist as it is currently being updated in

digital format by NIST.

30
length scales. It reduced calibration time

and cost by a factor of 10. Before the end

of the decade, a new method of stabilizing

lasers was discovered by NIST scientists,

yielding a 1,000'fold improvement in reproducing measurements made with an

interferometer. The growth of science, military and

space requirements, and the explosion in communications traffic demanded ever more accurate time standards, beyond that provided by NIST's original 1949 atomic

clock. In 1960, a clock called NBS II, based on the natural frequency of the cesium

atom, became the national standard of fre- quency, supplanting a set of quartz crystal

oscillators. It measured frequency and time

inter\'als to an accuracy of one second in 3,000 years. Since then, six even more

accurate cesium-based clocks—the latest is accurate to one second in nearly 20 million

years—have taken over as keepers of official national time, which is determined

through a coordinated effort with the U.S. Naval Observatory. NIST shifted from an

OS

OS

An Early Spreadsheet

More than a decade before spreadsheet software helped to launch

the boom in personal computers (PCs), NIST published Omnitab, a computer program for statistical and numerical analysis that had

many attributes of a spreadsheet.

Conceived by the Institute's Joseph Hilsenrath and based in part on colleague Joseph Wegstein's earlier work on a tabular computing scheme, Omnitab was written to automate routine program- ming tasks — such as handling data input and output and producing graphs— for NIST physicists, chemists, and engineers, who

were thus freed to concentrate on higher level science. Omnitab

proved so helpful that its use extended far beyond NIST. For about

1 0 years after its 1 966 publication, it was popular with statisti- cians in agricultural research, private industry, and universities. Foreign-language editions appeared as well; the program could accept simple commands in French, German, and even Japanese.

Omnitab was like a spreadsheet because it had an extensive and accurate math facility, a macro language, and a graphical

output. Most importantly, it created a tableau in which the

entries were calculated from input values. However, operations were defined for entire columns. VisiCalc, the "killer application" business spreadsheet unveiled in 1 979 for PCs, allowed

functions to be entered in individual cells and was more

dynamic and interactive. Omnitab initially used an old programming language and did

not migrate to PCs until after its heyday. But its influence persists

today in the form of Minitab, a PC-based commercial software package for teaching statistics and for research in business and

manufacturing.

NIST F-1, unveiled in December 1999, is one

of the most accurate clocks in the world.

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astronomical to an atomic definition of the second in 1967, when the international

community defined the second as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a particular

type of cesium atom. To reconcile differ- ences between the atomic time scale and

the Earth's rotation, "leap seconds" are added from time to time. The proliferation of computers also demanded standards. NIST issued the first Federal Information Processing Standard in 1968, a coded character set called the American Standard Code for Information

Exchange, more commonly known as ASCII. All computers procured by the federal government after mid- 1969 had to be

capable of using ASCII, which was originally developed by an industry standards committee chaired by an Institute staff member. Advances in computing and modeling technologies also led to new tasks for NIST, which began performing systems

analyses and operations research for other

federal agencies. It studied transportation

patterns, modeled patent activities, studied

earthquake prediction, helped the U.S.

Postal Service with mail handling and processing systems, and evaluated the perform- ance of the hurricane warning center.

Institutionally, NIST matured. The main

Institute campus moved from its aging,

urbanized site in the District of Columbia

(560 acre) former

farm in

Aerial view of the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, Md., as facilities neared

completion in 1 965.

32
Learning from Structural

Failures

By understanding the history of structural

failures, NIST engineers and materials

scientists help to make sure they aren't repeated.

So it was in 1 967, when the Point Pleasant Bridge linking West Virginia to Ohio suddenly collapsed, dumping vehicles into the Ohio River and killing 46

people. Transportation officials asked NIST to send an investigator, and after he

arrived, John Bennett found a shallow

crack that appeared to initiate a fracture

in a key piece of the bridge suspension

system. This system was made of a relatively new carbon steel that, as was later learned, tended to crack. Many other cracks were found, all in areas of heavy

corrosion. The investigation underscored the importance of basic research in materials science and engineering. It also led to safer bridges nationwide. An identical bridge was closed in West Virginia, and

federal highway officials then investigated cracks in all U.S. highway bridges.

Other high-profile failure analysis cases focused on ships and buildings. In the

1 940s, a number of U.S. "Liberty" ships

that had been welded together (instead of

riveted) cracked apart when exposed to

frigid water. NIST test results led to the use of better materials in supertankers.

In 1 981 , NIST was asked to investigate the collapse of walkways in the Kansas

City Hyatt Regency Hotel—the nation's worst building collapse, which killed 1 14

people and injured more than 200.

(In photo at left, NIST researchers test a

part from a Hyatt Regency Hotel walkway.) Among the major conclusions:

Critical connections in two walkways were

capable of supporting less than one-third

of the load expected under the local building code. This condition resulted from a change by the fabricator in the original design, and subsequent approval

of that change by the design engineer, without further analysis. As a result of this cose, the American Society of Civil Engineers adopted a document assigning,

for the first time, responsibility for various

aspects of the construction process.
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Gaithersburg, Md. Not long after the new

site was dedicated in 1966, NIST's research

reactor came on line. The reactor was, and

continues to be, used for neutron standards,

dosimetry, irradiation studies, and fundamental research. Another important addition, in Colorado, was the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (later called JILA),

which has been a model of interaction between government and academia. This

cooperative effort of NIST and the

University of Colorado went on to develop an international reputation in fields such as atomic physics (see Creating a New State of

Matter, page 50).

NIST continued to perform research

supporting industry. With U.S. highway

fatalities exceeding 50,000 a year, the

Institute also focused on auto safety.

Working with the Society of Automotive

Engineers, NIST prepared specifications

for brake fluids and seat belts, either adopting or modifying existing standards. Through the use of a unique testing facility,

a uniform quality grading system was

developed for tire treadwear, traction, and

temperature resistance. NIST also sought

to improve the dynamic performance of the dummies used in crash testing. Once

the fidelity of dummy tests was established, these tests were cited as justification for mandating shoulder harnesses in motor

vehicles. Just as many other Institute

efforts have been spun off to other agencies, this work eventually was transferred

to the National Highway Traffic Safety

Administration.

Important advances were made in materials science. NIST staff developed a reli- able procedure for determining polymer

melting points and proposed a new theory

of polymer crystallization, both of which

became mainstays of polymer science. In 1964, using the apparatus designed for one

of NIST's most famous experiments (see parity experiment photo, page 24), a NIST/University of California group

showed that superconductivity (the disappearance of resistance to the flow of an

electrical current) could occur in an oxide

An Out-of-Th is-World Experiment
semiconductor, strontium titanate. This

work foreshadowed Nobel Prize-winning

research in the mid-1980s by two IBM

Corp. researchers, who discovered an

oxide material that was superconducting at much higher temperatures than was generally believed possible.

At least two major policy trends of the

1960s had long-lasting effects on NIST.

First, a NXTiite House panel began encouraging the use of new technology in the

civilian economy. The Department of

Commerce was chosen to help spur economic growth, a formal mission that continues today: to find ways for govern- ment and science to interact in the realm

of science and technology to stimulate

economic prosperity. Second, the U.S.

Congress became increasingly active with

respect to environmental issues, passing

laws and amendments recognizing various

forms of pollution and requiring research and control efforts by both industry

and government.

On

•<1

Assuring Quality in Tests and Materials

Before 1 967, it was difficult to know whether a person really had

high cholesterol. That's because U.S. cholesterol tests were off by as much as 23 percent—resulting in either unnecessary treatment or an

increased (and unacknowledged) risk of death. Things changed for the better after 1 967, when NIST produced its

first Standard Reference Material® (SRM®) for clinical applications.

This pure, crystalline material, laboriously measured and analyzed, was used by manufacturers and clinical labs to calibrate instruments

for analyzing cholesterol. By 1969, the uncertainty in cholesterol

tests hod fallen to 1 8 percent. It fell further to about 5 percent in

1 995, thanks to new and improved renewals of blood serum SRMs

for cholesterol values, as well as other factors.

In recent decades, NIST has produced more than 60 different

clinical chemistry standards, which help to assure the accuracy, reliability, and consistency of a wide variety of laboratory tests, from

the amount of lead or glucose in blood to "DNA fingerprinting."

The clinical standards are just one category of SRMs, which

date back to 1 906 (when they were called standard samples). The

program began when the Institute was asked to settle disputes

regarding the carbon and sulfur contents of various irons and

steels used by the railroad industry. At the time, virtually no

technical information existed on the physical properties of these

materials, and there were few standard test methods or calibrated measurement tools. NIST produced its first standard sample when

the American Foundryman's Association requested standardized

iron for its member industries. Today, some 35,000 units of SRMs

are sold each year.

In their pioneering moon landing on

July 20, 1 969, the Apollo 1 1 crew left behind a briefcase-sized array of reflectors that bounce back a powerful laser

pulse aimed at it from telescopes on

Earth. By measuring the round-trip travel

time for the pulse (about 2.5 seconds),

scientists defined the distance between

the Eartfi and moon to better than 2.5 cm (1 inch). The experiment—one of the space program's longest running and

most cost effective—^was suggested by

James Poller of JILA, a Boulder, Colo.,

research institute jointly operated by

NIST and the University of Colorado. He

also provided the initial design for the Apollo 1 1 array and the two additional

reflector arrays that were left by later

missions, Apollo 1 4 (shown at left) and

Apollo 1 5. The experiment, which is still

active today, continues to provide new

insights into the length of the Earth's day;

knowledge of the moon's orbit, the lunar

tides, and the combined mass of the

Earth and moon; and an important test

of gravitational theories.

Public support for science dwindled

m the late 1960s and early 1970s, per- haps in part because of the financial drain of the Vietnam War and the growing perception that science could not

cure many social problems. Scientists,

therefore, had to become more active and

skilled in convincing funding sources that

their research was socially relevant and

worthwhile.

Much of NIST's work during this time

directly affected the public. At the behest

of the Congress, for instance, the Institute undertook a comprehensive study of the metric system and published A Metric

America, which recommended a policy of voluntary conversion. President Gerald

Ford signed the policy into law in 1975; the U.S. government continues to encourage a voluntary changeover. NIST also prepared an impartial method for the draft

lottery of July 1970, influencing which of America's young people would enter military service. Public safety was a drivmg

concern: NIST helped investigate a numproving Antenna Design and Performance

her of major disasters, from a Texas tornado

to a California earthquake, and provided

technical support for the new Consumer

Product Safety Commission, studying

everything from the tlammability of sleeping bags to children's capabilities to push,

pull, and twist toys in harmful ways. NIST also applied basic research knowledge to solve practical problems.

Research in acoustics, begun years earlier, was applied to non-destructive methods

for detecting flaws in materials and structures. In acoustic emissions technology,

transient microscopic vibrations of a

structure such as a highway bridge are monitored to anticipate the potential failure of critical components. To overcome

the difficult challenge of detecting pulses that last only a microsecond, NIST

reduced the problem to three essential elements, each of which was then solved. The staff developed a standard acoustic emission source that became widely used,

a predictive analytic computer code for wave propagation in materials, and a

The 1 ,000 satellites orbiting the Earth today would be space junk without highperformance, cost-effective antennas to transmit and receive communications signals.

Among NIST's pivotal contributions to antenna technology was the development of a

theory that made it practical for researchers to compute an antenna's complex outdoor

radiation pattern using data collected entirely indoors near a test antenna. (Photo at left shows an antenna being readied for near-field measurements.) NIST also developed

software for using the data to compute field performance; the source code remains in

use today. These advances have saved millions of dollars in testing costs for the military

and satellite manufacturers, among other users.
high-fidelity sensor that accurately measured emissions. As always, NIST provided calibration

services to hundreds of firms, not only

doing the work but also showing others how to do it themselves. For instance, an

Institute scientist showed a state metrologist how $500 worth of off-the-shelf equipment, coupled with radio signals from

NIST radio station WWV, could be used to

calibrate the tuning forks needed to check

the accuracy of police radar equipment.

Meanwhile, basic research in fields such

as physics and surface science enabled

NIST to maintain and enhance the technical competence needed to carry out multiple missions and provide the measurement

foundation for technological innovation.

NIST research in atomic physics centered

around the use of laser light to cool and trap various particles. The first proposal for cool- ing atomic ions (atoms possessing a net electrical charge) was made in 1975 by scientists including one from NIST, who, concurrently

with another team, reported the first successful demonstration of this effect in 1978. By the mid-1980s, two other Institute scientists demonstrated different techniques for cooling, or slowing, atoms (which are neutral and therefore pose different challenges),

a prerequisite for trapping them. All of this work was motivated initially by fundamental

A New Kind

OF Microscope

The scanning tunneling

microscope (STM), widely used today in fields ranging from molecular biology to nanotechnology, enables scientists to see and manipulate

individual atoms on surfaces and understand some of the

physical, electronic, and

magnetic structures of sur- faces. It is such an important

tool that, in 1 986, tv/o IBM

Corp. scientists shared the Nobel Prize in physics for building the first STM able to glimpse the atomic surface. Today, there are about 5,000

STMs and related instruments in use throughout the world. Some 1 5 years before, NIST physicist Russell Young built the Topografiner (see above), a novel microscope that surveyed surfaces in great detail, nearly to the level of individual atoms. With this instru- ment. Institute researchers demonstrated the operating principle of the STM. The Nobel committee credited Young with being the first to demonstrate the use of a sharp-tipped stylus, held at a very small and

constant distance above a sample, to scan and map surfaces. The committee also recognized Young for proposing to use "tunneling" current—a quantum mechanical phenomenon—as the means to image

surfaces. Today, the Topografiner resides in the Smithsonian Institution. Young's work is a highlight of extensive NIST research on surfaces,

sometimes described as a fourth state of matter because they are so

different from solids, liquids, and gases. Rapid advances in surface

science at NIST and elsewhere from the 1 960s through the present

have contributed to the development of catalysts, semiconductor

devices, chemical sensors, and computing systems. In 1 985, for example. Institute researchers demonstrated magnetic imaging using scan- ning electron microscopy with polarization analysis (SEMPA), a new

type of microscopy they developed to observe magnetic structures up

to 1 00 times smaller than can be seen using optical techniques. Since

then, SEMPA has assisted in the rapid development of high-density

magnetic data-storage systems.
scientific needs and drives, but, as noted at the time, it was easy to imagine that unfore- seen uses might arise. Indeed, this research

led to a Nobel Prize in physics for a NIST

scientist and a variety of practical applications (see text box, page 54).

Much of NIST's time during this era was

taken up with research on energy and envi- ronmental problems, largely in response to

the oil embargo of 1973 and a batch of environmental legislation as well as growing

public support for protection of the environ- ment. The first Earth Day was held in 1970. Several years later, it was estimated that the United States would spend more than $190

billion over the next 10 years to attain federal standards for air and water quality.

NIST was a key player in the environmental movement because pollutant concentrations had to be measured accurately.

» UE SEIZED an THE OPPORTUNITY

TO USE TECHNOLOGY FROPI HIST.

The Origins of Closed Captioning

In an example of a research technology with significant commercial spin-offs, NIST's

TvTime, a method for broadcasting time and frequency information on television, was

transformed into closed captioning. Approved for wide use by the Federal

Communications Commission in 1 976, the technology won an Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in engineering development in 1 980. It has greatly benefited the

deaf and hard of hearing. Today, closed captioning is used on virtually all nationally

broadcast programming, most new syndicated programming, many cable programs,

and thousands of motion pictures. It also created a new industry of suppliers of closed

captioning services.
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13

Making Beher Measurements

Measurements have a symbiotic relationship with science and tech- nology. They depend on each other, and if one

advances, the other does too. A case in point is the work of Ken Evenson and his team at NIST's Boulder campus, who made a world-record meas- urement of the frequency of laser

light in 1 972. That led to a much

more accurate value for the speed of light, thus enabling scientists to better understand the behavior of the universe and more

accurately track satellites and

spaceships. The ripple effect of the advance then came back full circle to measurement science in the form of a new, more stable definition of the meter NIST actually achieved nine world-record measurements of laser fre- quency between 1 969 and 1 979. But the one in 1 972 was special

because the laser was stabilized, ensuring that any other similar laser

will operate at the same frequency so that the experiment can be

repeated. This design also enabled accurate independent measurements of the light's wavelength.

Wavelength multiplied by frequency equals the speed of light

which in this case was 100 times more accurate than the value accepted

for the previous 1 5 years. The new value for the speed of light was

accepted internationally in 1 973 (and finalized in the 1 983 redefinition of the meter). Because frequency can be measured more accurately than wavelength (in fact, frequency is the most accurately measured value in science), scientists then wanted to improve the standard of length,

which had been defined in terms of the wavelength of a certain type of

light. In 1 983, based largely on the achievements of Evenson and his team, the meter was formally redefined in terms of the new value for the speed of light.

Safeguarding Electronic Data

About the time the personal computer was invented,

NIST issued the first publicly available data encryption

standard (DES)—a landmark event in an era when most

cryptographic equipment was either proprietary

or classified. DES has secured much of the world's electronic data

ever since. It was the first cryptographic algorithm

endorsed by the federal government and was embraced

by the private sector, especially banking, where it protects

billions of dollars in transfers and other financial transactions daily. When a person withdraws cash from an auto- mated teller machine, for instance, his or her personal

identification number is probably encrypted using DES.

Reflecting the popularity of DES, four leading

standards-setting organizations participated in the development of DES-based cryptographic standards for financial data, information processing and financial services, federal procurement, and telecommunications security. Commercial hardware and software products also rely on it. The most recent industry survey showed that, as of

late 1 997, almost half of U.S. cryptographic products

and 43 percent of foreign products used DES. The DES algorithm was developed by IBM Corp.

However, NIST played a major role in the resulting popularity of the technology by making it a standard for federal agencies, assuring that the standard met all requirements

and was acceptable to many potential users, analyzing

security concerns, and evaluating the costs and benefits of modifying or replacing the standard. The thoroughness

of the testing is reflected by the fact that, even 23 years

after it was issued, DES is still considered unbreakable

except by brute force (i.e., using computers to try every

possible 56-bit key). Today, NIST is coordinating the development of a more powerful successor standard.
Among its energy' conservation projects,

NIST published design and evaluation criteria for new buildings. The publication served as the technical basis for industry's

first major voluntary consensus standard for

energ^• conser\'ation in new buildings. A

consultant's evaluation found that this new

standard would reduce energ^^ consumption

by as much as 59 percent in some buildings.

A study covering the time period 1975 to 1984 found that NIST's contribution to the energy cost savings in single-family houses

due to the industry standard was $919 million in 1975 dollars ($2.6 billion in 1995

dollars)—many times more than the cost of the program. In a separate project, NIST

developed testing and rating procedures for

all major energy-consuming equipment in

residential buildings to support the devel- opment of national efficiency standards by

the U.S. Department of Energy'. Environmental research spanned air, water, soil, and living organisms. A

portable meter was designed to detect a broad range of electromagnetic interfer- ence with twice the sensitivity of previous

devices; it could be used to assess the emissions of appliances and maintain safe exposure levels for industrial workers. Various

devices were developed to measure pollutants such as those from automobile emissions. A computer model was written to help allocate fish catches in a river system; the model provided a detailed analysis of the economic and biological effects of changes in the salmon fishery regulations.

In another area of enviromental concern, NIST intro- duced Standard Ref- erence Materials to help gauge radioactive

contamination of the

environment, the first and still leading inter- national effort of this type. NIST also created a biomonitoring specimen

bank in cooperation with

the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency. Thousands of specimens, ranging from marine mussels to human livers, were pre- served in liquid nitrogen

and then analyzed to measure changes in exposure to chemicals and pollutants over time. As the tissue banking activities expanded to encompass a broad range ot environmental samples. Insti- tute scientists established stan- dard protocols and practices for proper handling of environmental samples. These procedures, as practiced by environmental labs around the world, help ensure the

quality and reliability of environmental measures. A container of tissue samples is removed from storage in NISTs

biomonitoring specimen bank, used

for monitoring long-term pollution

and hiealth trends.

In Semiconductors, Smaller Is Better

As integrated circuits (computer cfiips) shrink in size, the semiconductor industry needs increasingly tiny "rulers"

for measuring the widths of circuit features. If feature

size is not controlled, then the chips may fail. Who better to meet this need than NIST, which has assisted the semiconductor industry for more than 45 years?

When the feature-size issue first arose, NIST created an entirely new measurement system and, in 1 979,

issued its first photomask linewidth standard, which

became an instant best seller. Three leading companies

stopped using internal standards and adopted the one

from NIST. This standard reduced measurement discrep- ancies among companies tenfold, stimulated the production of new commercial instruments, extended the range

of use of optical microscopes, and saved the industry

millions of dollars annually.

By the mid- 1 980s, chip features were on the order of

1 micrometer wide (75 to 100 times thinner than a human hair). Today, dimensions are about one-tenth that

size. To meet today's needs, NIST has responded with photomask linewidth standards with ever smaller features, as well as several new approaches for accurately

measuring circuit features as small as one-tenth of a micrometer (or less). Methods that use the spacing

between crystalline silicon otoms or direct counting of the atoms as the ruler are currently being pursued. NIST

researchers also are developing special microscopic

techniques for use as calibration and metrology tools.

41
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Although the value of science and

technology seemed unquestionable, federal agencies still needed

to demonstrate the value they returned to taxpayers. This was particularly true as Americans began focusing, perhaps more

than ever, on their economic prospects.

The 1980s, after all, are often characterized

as a time when Americans became pre- occupied with money. And yet there was a collective uncertainty concerning how to explain economic growth and, in particular, how to sustain it. Thus, after decades of contributing to the national prosperity in myriad ways, NIST began efforts to formally

demonstrate its influence. In 1981, the first formal analysis of the economic impact of NIST programs was

published. A consultant estimated that the semiconductor metrology program significantly boosted the industry's productivity

in the mid-1970s, improving product features and reliability, increasing production

yields, and reducing costs—and providing

social returns that matched or exceeded

levels reported elsewhere for privately generated innovations. The study estimated

that the metrology program's research contributed $30 million to $50 million per year

to the semiconductor industry in the mid1970s. More than 20 other economic

impact studies since have been carried out

for NIST laboratory programs, revealing

substantial returns on investment.

NIST also expanded its interactions with

the private sector, building on a tradition of

assisting and collaborating with trade associations, individual firms, and industrial consortia. Its program of hosting industrial research associates, begun in the 1920s, had more than 200 participants by the mid1980s, for example. The rest of the federal laboratory system adopted a similar style of

interaction during the 1980s, when new

laws were passed emphasizing cooperative

research and technology transfer. Many view

this legislation as implementing the practices developed at NIST over the years. (By

August 2000, NIST would report more than

950 cooperative research and development

agreements over a 12 -year period, as well as 1,550 visiting scientists on site annually.)

00

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Monitoring Enviromental Pollution

The environmental movement of the 1 970s was

sustained by many research projects at NIST, which

developed standards and methods for measuring oil sorts of pollutants in air, water, soil, and sediment. Many NIST innovations—such as an instrument that characterizes microscopic particles in the air and stan- dards for measuring fuel economy and emissions

remain in use today. NIST also served as an objective technical resource and trusted arbiter when asked by the Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) to help resolve one of the most

contentious issues of the era—the extent of chemical

contamination of the Love Canal area of Niagara Falls, N.Y. The EPA conducted an environmental monitoring

program at Love Canal and asked NIST to review the

draft analysis for organic chemicals. NIST experts in organic analytical chemistry, quality assurance, and statistics reviewed certain aspects

(although not the conclusions) of the draft. They

found a number of significant deficiencies; among

them, EPA's study design did not permit a comparison of contamination levels at Love Canal with those deemed hazardous or found in U.S. cities. But the

Institute also determined that the analytical tech- niques were appropriate to the general goals of the study and represented the best overall techniques for monitoring organic chemicals in environmental samples. Ultimately, the EPA concluded that no signifi- cant amounts of contamination were found except in the immediate vicinity of the canal, in nearby storm

sewers, and in the creeks near sewer outfalls. Although the NIST report was critical of some

aspects of the EPA study, which was released in 1982, an EPA administrator called it "the most thor- ough, extensive, state-of-the-art environmental study ever undertaken" and described NIST participation as "essential for the successful completion of the

study."

42
Some scientists predicted that such a feat would be impossible. Institute to represent 1 volt. (For years, the legal volt was mainOthers tried it and failed. But NIST succeeded in developing a tained on the basis of the "mean electromotive' force" of a bank

standard for the volt that is more accurate, more stable, and

much easier to use than its predecessors.

The NIST standard is absolute in the sense that it is based

directly on a single, simple equation of physics and thus offers a major advantage over previous standards. It is based on the

"Josephson effect," observed when hvo superconducting materials are separated by a thin insulating film and a current tunnels

through the barrier (or junction). When such a device is irradiated with microwave radiation of known frequency, a voltage is

induced across its terminals that is related to the frequency and

two well-known fundamental atomic constants. The magnitude of

the voltage can be calculated readily from the known frequency

and constants.

It was not easy putting the Josephson effect to metrological

use. A single junction produces a maximum output of a few

millivolts, much less than the standard device then used by the

of electrochemical cells, a value that drifted over time and

between labs.) Then in 1970, NIST developed an instrument

based on Josephson junctions that could generate a signal of

2 to 10 millivolts and compared it to the U.S. legal volt with

acceptable accuracy. The big breakthrough came in 1 984, when NIST demonstrated the first practical array of Josephson junctions at the

1-volt level. (The photo below shows the standard undergoing

testing.) Two years later, a 10-volt standard was developed.

With almost 20,000 junctions, it was, for a time, the largest

practical superconducting circuit in the world. Today, at least 40 national standards laboratories, milifary organizations, an(

private companies worldwide rely on standards based on NlSll^veloped technology to calibrate voltmeters. Products

mad^M-ith these instruments range from compact, d

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Defining the Volt, Absolutely

With U.S. firms facing growing competition in a global economy, NIST researchers found ways to improve on traditional manufacturing practices and materials. A

robotic manufacturing system designed and

assembled by NIST began operating at a naval shipyard in California, producing any

of 40 different pipe connector parts used to suppress noise in nuclear submarines.

Whereas it took 1 7 hours to make one part

by hand, the workstation could machine

the same part in less than 30 minutes. The

Institute also began studying the properties

and processing of materials as a basis for engineering new materials for products

offering enhanced performance. NIST

worked with auto manufacturers, for example, to find economical ways of making

lightweight automobile frames out of rein- forced plastics. In continuing its original mission of cooperating with and supporting the pri- vate sector, NIST emphasized programs

designed to assist emerging industries such

as biotechnology, space science, and optical communications.

Biotechnology became a byword of the 1980s with the development of DNA fin-
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gerprinting for identification purposes and

the advent of genetically engineered products. Accordingly, NIST, the University of Maryland, and Montgomery County, Md.,

formed the Center for Advanced Research

in Biotechnology (CARB), designed to be a multidisciplinary center of protein engineering. Among their achievements,

CARB scientists worked with industry to

alter aii enzyme found in common soil bacteria so that laundry detergent containing

the enzyme could better tackle tough stains, overcoming a long-standing problem in that industry. Meanwhile, NIST began pro- ducing standards to ensure accuracy in

forensic DNA analysis. This technology was one of dozeris for which NIST scientists have won R&D 100 awards,

given annually by R&D Magazine for the most technologically significant new products of the year.

To contribute to the development of standards for medical and surgical devices, NIST researchers studied materials used

in artificial joints.

Space science advanced after the first reusable spacecraft, the shuttle, was sent

into orbit in 1981. NIST actually made the

first sales of a product manufactured in space, in the form of a measurement tool.

Billions of tiny polystyrene spheres, made

highly uniform in shape and size in the lowgravity environment of space, were made

available as a Standard Reference Material

for calibrating instruments used by medical,

environmental, and electronics researchers. Such instruments could be used, for example, to count and measure the shape of blood cells. Another project involved radio- metric calibrations of an optical simulator

and light sources for the Hubble Space

Telescope, put into orbit in 1990. NIST was

the only lab in the world that could provide

certain types of calibrations essential for space-based astronomy.

A krypton lamp similar to the one in the photo was calibrated with NIST's help for the Hubble Space Telescope.

44
Back on Earth, fiber-optic technology

began to show up in U.S. communications

systems because it could carry far more data than traditional copper telephone lines. NIST had anticipated this trend when its

staff began characterizing optical fibers in the

1970s. These hair-thin strands of glass carry information in the form of light waves emitted by lasers. As fiber optics became more

per\'asive, the NIST program expanded to include measurement and calibration services and research on devices that send,

receive, and process data. There was some

urgency to this work because, although

Americans invented the core components

of optical technology, Japan had taken the

lead in marketing products based on them.

By the mid to late 1980s, U.S. leaders were increasingly worried about foreign

competition, principally from Japan but

also from Europe. A deluge of government

and industry reports warned that America

was falling behind in key technology

areas, succumbing particularly to Japan's

ability to commercialize U.S. inventions

first and manufacture products efficiently.

One of the more timely examples was

Japan's success in commercializing the

video-cassette recorder, which had been

invented years before by a U.S. company.

A key part of the federal government's

solution to this problem was NIST, which

had been reorgar^ized and redirected several times in its history, but never so dramatically as in 1988, when the Omnibus Trade

and Competitiveness Act was passed.

The purpose of the act was "to modernize

and restructure [NIST] to augment its unique ability to enhance the competitiveness of American industry while maintaining its traditional function as lead laboratory for providing the measurements, cali00

4^

Discovering a New

Material

when a peculiar arrangement of

metallic particles first appeared under an electron microscope at NIST, scientists thought it was a mistake. It was unlike any of the 230 crystal shapes

described in reference books. But the pattern turned out to be a true

reflection of the structure of a "quasicrystal"—an entirely new material. Thediscovery of quasicrystals by NIST guest researcher Dan Shechtman (one of hundreds of guest researchers who collaborate with NIST scientists and use the

facilities every year) was reported in ] 984 by a team that included Institute scientist John Cahn, who subsequently developed models that enhanced understanding of the crystallography of these materials. The 1 984 paper was cited 2,330 times in other

publications by 1 998, evidence of its wide influence. Although initially skepticism was rampant, and alternate models of the structure were proposed for several years, quasicrystals eventually rewrote the rules of crystal- lography and spawned a flurry of activity in materials science, physics, and

mathematics. Cahn later won the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest

scientific honor, for his lifetime contributions to the fields of materials science, solidstate physics, chemistry, and mathematics.

The breakthrough was "pure serendipity," in Cahn's words, an unexpected boon of NIST research on the thermodynamics of rapidly solidified alloys. The researchers intended to cool a molten metal so fast that it would not crystallize in the usual manner To their surprise, the aluminum and manganese atoms formed orderly structures

that, unlike ordinary crystals, did not repeat at fixed intervals. More than just an academic research topic, quasicrystals have practical uses because they are hard, lightweight, low friction, non-stick, non-scratch, and

inexpensive. By the late 1990s, they were being commercialized as coatings for kitchen cookware and hardening agents for steel medical instruments. Many other

uses are expected.

45
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Scientists studied the optical characteristics of

fluorescent molecules as part of NIST's research on biosensors.

CX)

Saving the Ozone Layer

The Earth is better protected from the sun today thanks to NIST

research and data programs, which have helped to both define and

solve the problem of chemical damage to the protective ozone layer. Fundamental research by NIST in the ] 970s underlined the damage caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from aerosol propellants

and refrigerants. NIST and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration used laser spectroscopic techniques developed at NIST to identify and measure critical chemical reactions and then

input the results into a computer model of the upper atmosphere. Because of this research, damage to the ozone layer from fluoro- carbons was estimated to be three times greater than previously

assumed.

With more than 50 years experience in providing industry with data on the physical properties of refrigerants, the Institute responded

to an international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting compounds by launching a major effort to identify and characterize

alternatives to CFCs. In 1989, NIST introduced REFPROP, a standard

reference database of the thermophysical properties of alternative

refrigerants. The Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute and the

Electric Power Research Institute adopted REFPROP as the source of

critically evaluated data for their alternative refrigerants evaluation program. The database, which has saved industry millions of dollars,

is a prime example of how NIST and industry work together to successfully meet needs for reliable technical data. Today, CFCs are being replaced by newer, less damaging

refrigerants. REFPROP has proven especially valuable in the evaluation of refrigerant blends, such as those now used in some home air- conditioning systems and heat pumps. NIST has distributed widely

used software that models important engineering aspects of the use of new refrigerant blends. In addition. Institute refrigerant data were

used to validate the choice of an alternative refrigerant used in a wide variety of refrigeration and air-conditioning systems, including those in newer cars.

NIST worked with industry to evaluate

the performance of atmospherically safe

refrigerants in refrigeration systems.

46
brations, and quality assurance techniques

which underpin U.S. commerce, technological progress, improved product reliability and manufacturing processes, and public safety."

To go along with the expaneied mission, its name was changed from

National Bureau of Standards to the National Institute of Standards and

Technology, and two new programs were added. The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) was

designed to encourage private

investments in innovative tech- nologies with the potential for broad national benefit that other- wise would not be developed in time to be competitive in world

markets. The Manufacturing

Extension Partnership (MEP)

was initiated to assist the

385,000 small U.S. manufacturers with a wide range of activities through a nationwide net- work of not-for-profit centers. These two efforts complemented the Baldrige National

Quality Program, created in 1987 to manage the Malcolm

Baldrige National Quality

Award, which recognizes

individual U.S. organizations for their achievement, and to promote quality awareness and provide information on successful performance strategies.

Lasers were used to measure the response speed of optical communications devices.
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They may not be taking over the world— at least not yet— but robots are

getting smarter. And a growing number

owe their "brainpower" to NIST.

In 1991, a floor-cleaning robot

became the first commercial "intelligent

machine" influenced by NIST's real-time

control system (RCS), a concept for controlling automation developed by NIST's Jim Albus, a leading robotics

researcher. The RCS has a unique hierarchical structure that creates an efficient organization for knowledge-based

intelligent control of complex systems.

Other commercial machines based on

this concept are improving the precision

of shipbuilding, delivering hospital supplies efficiently, and keeping U.S. troops out of harm's way by clearing land

mines in Bosnia.

The RCS was among the influential

technologies to emerge from NIST's Automated Manufacturing Research

Facility (shown in photo above), created

in 1982 to provide a national testbed

for R&D in computer-integrated manufacturing. The facility, which was co- sponsored by the U.S. Navy and involved

research collaborations with industry and

universities, has led to dozens of commercial products and many national and

international standards. Among the contributions is the Standard for the Exchange of Product

Model Data (STEP), which is designed to overcome interoperability problems that

arise when automated systems attempt

to share product and engineering data.

These problems cost the auto industry

alone about $1 billion annually. First

released in 1994, STEP is a universal

file format that supports computerto-computer exchanges of all types of

product data. Significant cost and

process improvements have been

reported by users.
Technology proved its value to national security once again in the 1990s when the United States used it to help win the Gulf War. More significantly, technology also demonstrated

its power to fuel economic growth when

American inventions, such as the Internet and the graphical "browser" for the World

Wide Web, created a new national pas- time and a multitude of new information

industries. Partly as a result of this phenomenon, the concerns of the 1980s

regarding U.S. competitiveness dissipated

somewhat. NIST contributed to the new

Information Age in important ways by, for example, leading the development of stan- dards for computer security, many of which

subsequently were adopted as voluntary

industry standards. Development of civilian technology was

accelerated in the 1990s through a series of government initiatives. With leading

economists asserting that technology

Neutrons Offer New Insights

From checking on food safety to nailing crime suspects to probing biological membranes, the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) has done practically everything a scientific facility can do— including some

things that would be impossible anywhere else. The center offers a broad array of instruments and capabilities, some of which are unique in the United States and even the world. A

special set of rare tools was added in 1 991 , when the Cold Neutron

Research Facility was completed and became the first U.S. facility devoted solely to research with cold (lower-energy) neutrons. Neutron beams interact with the inner structures and dynamics of

virtually any material, often revealing details that cannot be discerned

in any other way. In its early years in the 1 970s, the NCNR perhaps was best known for the use of "warm" neutrons in forensic investigations, such as the time when postal authorities matched specks of paint from a burglar's tool satchel with the paint at several post offices and

broke up a burglary ring. Today, the center is pushing the frontiers of many fields of

science. For example, research with "cold" neutrons has revealed molecular mechanisms involved in regulating muscle contraction and

led to the development of improved additives that enable diesel fuel to remain fluid at subzero temperatures. Depth-profiling techniques led

to the creation of a titanium nitride Standard Reference Material that now is used in semiconductor testing, meeting one of that industry's greatest needs. Magnetic measurements have helped to explain the origin of the behavior of materials exhibiting "giant magnetoresistance," the basis for ultrahigh-density computer hard drives.

standards and other measurement technologies

needed to help ensure the safety and viability of

tissue engineered materials.
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Creating a New State

OF Matter

Pushing the limits of technology is NIST's forte. It paid off in a big

way in 1 995, when scientists at

JILA, a joint program of NIST and

the University of Colorado (CU), created an entirely new state of matter predicted decades ago by

Albert Einstein and Indian physicist

Satyendra Nath Bose. The Bose-Einstein condensate—

widely hailed as one of the century's major achievements in physicsis an atomic counterpart to the laser in that a large number of atoms

are in the same quantum mechanical state. (Lasers cause a large number of photons to have identical energy and direction.) To make this new state of matter, NIST's Eric Cornell (pictured above)

and CU's Carl Wieman cooled rubidium atoms to less than 1 millionth of a degree above absolute zero (the hypothetical point at which a

substance would have minimal energy), as much as 300 times lower

than ever achieved in other scientific laboratories. At a certain temperature, the atoms condensed into a "superatom" that behaved as a sin- gle entity. The achievement was made possible by laser cooling and magnetic

traps, technologies that NIST played a major role in developing.

Infrared lasers, similar to those used in compact disk players, were

aligned so that the atoms were bombarded by a steady stream of photons from different directions. Once the atoms were slowed and

cooled, they were kept in place by a magnetic field and further cooled until the condensate formed.

Biotechnology for the 2 1 st Century

A device the size of a keychain launched an industry— and giant strides in science and medicine— in 1996, when it became the first commercial "DNA chip."

It did so with the help of NIST's Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which accelerates the development of ^i^ innovative technologies for broad national benefit through R&D partnerships with the private sector. The DNA chip is so named because of its similarity to the tiny integrated circuit that fuels the electronics industry. The

V ^ ^ difference is in the application. The newfangled device enables the operation of a miniaturized biological laboratory that ^^^

quickly analyzes the genetic makeup of blood or tissue samples. V ATP funding also has led to other next-generation products for DNA analysis that have appeared on the market or in ^^1^ research laboratories, greatly advancing capabilities for research on human genetics, discovery of new drugs, improve- ments in agriculture, and testing of food and cosmetics. The new technologies are already up to 1 ,000 times faster than

conventional methods, thereby saving time and money. They also are highly accurate and convenient. As noted in a recent journal article, the "godfather" of the burgeoning field of DNA diagnostics is the ATP, which

helped companies advance their early research to a stage where commercialization (with other funding) would be feasible. The ATP has co-funded more than two dozen projects in DNA diagnostics, including one that led to the first DNA

chip, and a number of the award recipients are leaders in the field today.
accounts for at least half of U.S. economic

growth, the federal government took a new

approach to funding science and technology. Instead of just basic research and military and space applications, the new out- look also encompassed broadly applicable, "precompetitive" (not quite ready

for commercialization) technologies that can be applied by industry to create better products, high-paying jobs, and a clean

environment.

In addition to electronics and information systems, a number of other technology

areas were identified by the government as

critical or strategic to U.S. interests. These

included energy and environmental quality,

manufacturing, medicine and biotechnology, materials, and transportation. There

remains strong interest in helping small

businesses compete and in nurturing the

Helping Small Manufacturers Thrive

Small manufacturing firms gained an important advantage in the

1 990s in the form of NIST's Manufacturing Extension Partnership

(MEP), which, according to an independent study, boosts the competitiveness of its clients beyond the average for companies of this size. The MEP helps th ese firms with everything from financial planning to plant layout to environmental studies. The services are offered through a network of more than 400 not-for-profit centers that provide small and medium-sized companies with access to more than 2,000 manufacturing and business specialists. In 1 996, the MEP reached its goal of completing a nationwide network, enabling all of the more than 385,000 U.S. small manufacturers in the 50 states and Puerto Rico to gain access to MEP assistance centers. Through 1 998, more than 84,000 firms have taken advantage of the

services, which are fostering significant improvements in manufacturing

and business performance. For example, in a 1 999 follow-up study, 4,551 MEP clients reported increased revenues of $294 million, $29 million in labor and materials savings, and $20 million in inventory

reductions, while also investing $291 million in modernization. These

clients also reported creating and retaining more than 7,000 jobs.

Partnership, more than 400 not-for-profit centers offer smaller manufacturers technical and business assistance. Call 1 -800-MEP4MFG for the center serving your region.
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Fire Research Helps Save Lives

Three decades ago, U.S. fire losses were so large that a presidential

commission was appointed to study the problem. The commission's

1 973 report urged a greater emphasis on fire research, prevention,

and education and set a national goal of reducing fire-related losses by at least 50 percent. A 50 percent reduction in the U.S. fire death rate was attained in

1 997. A primary reason: Smoke detectors now are installed in more

than 95 percent of U.S. homes, compared to fewer than 10 percent in the early 1 970s. NIST researchers made this improvement possible

beginning in 1 974 by developing, with Underwriters Laboratories'

participation, the first fire performance standard for smoke detectors and recommendations on the number, type, and location of home

smoke alarms now found in all U.S. (and most foreign) codes and

standards. NIST also worked closely with other government agencies, per- forming the technical work underpinning the first federal standards on

children's sleepwear and mattresses and writing the U.S. Fire Administration's most popular educational booklets. Fire fatalities attributed to children's sleepwear have virtually disappeared, and

those from mattress fires have been cut in half. For the Federal Railroad Administration, NIST also tested the fire safety of passenger

train seats (see photo below).

The Institute's long-standing relationships with the private sector have helped to introduce less-flammable floor coverings into the marketplace; verified the value of fire-retardant additives in increasing escape time from fires; and produced the only validated method for quantifying the lethality of smoke, now routinely used in fire hazard

anolysis.

52
interdisciplinary' research that increasingly

fuels advances in science and technology.

NIST continues to be involved in all these areas. In addition to maintaining

strong basic research programs in physics,

chemistry, materials, electronics, manufacturing, building technology, and other

fields, its Measurement and Standards

Laboratories provide measurements, standards, and other support for industries that produce critical technologies. This work

helps companies solve problems and commercialize new technologies faster than

before, a linchpin of competitiveness in the 1990s and the new millennium.

Meanwhile, the ATP nurtures innovation across a broad range of technology

sectors. A study of the first 38 completed

ATP projects estimated that the national

economic benefits of just several projects

will exceed the ATP's entire investment in the more than 450 projects selected at the time of the study. The ATP also has proven

to be highly effective in fostering cross- cutting, interdisciplinary collaborations

among large and small firms and academic

This Braille reader was created as part of a NIST project to make electronic books more

accessible to the blind.

In 1991, the U.S. printed wiring

board industry was in trouble. The

$7 billion industry with its 200,000

jobs was saved, according to the dent of the National Center for

ufacturing Sciences, by a

rch project co-funded by NIST' need Technology Program

ding to a 1 997 study, the join

Turning Around a Key U.S. Industry

venture led to dramatic efficiencies in research and development (a $35.5

million savings, or more than two

and a half times the ATP investment),

accelerated research, and produced

significant technological advances.

The project also enabled more than

research tasks that otherwise

not have been attempted.
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Laser Cooling and Trapping

Win Nobel Prize

Atoms or molecules in a gas are difficult to study because they move

so fast. The molecules in air, for example, move at about 300 meters per second, or 1 ,000 kilometers per hour. But by pushing on the gaseous atoms with laser light, scientists can slow the atoms down,

cooling them to within a millionth of a degree of absolute zero. NIST

physicist William D. Phillips (pictured below) won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1 997 for his work on the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. The discipline of cooling and trapping atoms, which emerged with

the advent of laboratory lasers, was established in part by experi- ments with ions (electrically charged atoms) by David J. Wineland

and others at NIST's Boulder campus beginning in the 1 970s.

Inspired by this work, Phillips and his team demonstrated both the trapping of atoms (which are electrically neutral) with a magnetic

field and the cooling of atoms well below the temperature limits generally believed possible.

The Nobel committee said the new methods of investigation devel- oped by Phillips and two other 1 997 prize winners "have contributed

greatly to increasing our knowledge of the interplay between radiation and matter, in particular, they have opened the way to a deeper

understanding of the quantum-physical behavior of gases at low

temperatures."

The research has enabled the design and construction of one of

the world's most accurate clocks, NIST F-1 , which is used by NIST

(in cooperation with the Naval Observatory) to maintain the nation's time standard. In other experiments at NIST, laser cooling and trap- ping have been used to achieve a new state of matter. Some day,

this research may lead to practical advances such as quantum computers capable of processing information in unique ways.

54
Sunk Titanic

Since the sinking of the giant ocean

liner Titanic in 1912, numerous theories hove been advanced about the

causes. NIST has one too—weak rivets. NIST metallurgist Tim Foecke's

microscopic analysis of 48 wrought

iron rivets recovered from the ship's

hull have revealed that nearly 40

percent contained up to three times

the amount of slag (the glassy

residue left behind after the smelting

of ore) allowed at the time. This

made the rivets prone to premature

failure. Titanids collision with the ice- berg may have caused the rivet heads to break off, opening seams and allowing water to rush in between the separated hull plates,

speeding the ship's descent.

199

institutions. To assist small businesses, the MEP provides essential support and services, such as help in streamlining manufacturing processes to improve productivity.

And a broad consensus has emerged indi- cating the Baldrige program has greatly

improved attention to quality and organizational excellence across the private sector. Although the economic threat posed by

foreign countries has lessened for now,

ensuring the nation's ability to compete in the 21st century remains a challenge. Recent analyses by a variety of organizations indicate that the U.S. lead over Japan

is widening in technology areas such as software, sensors, and information management. But Japan is leading in other sectors, such as flat-panel displays, and gaining

ground in others. And Japan has been

joined by many other emerging economies.

Of further concern, U.S. investment in
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research and development is lower as a per- centage of national wealth than it was in the early 1980s, leading some to question

America's capacity for future innovation.

At the close of the 20th century, there

are more than 700 federal laboratories in the United States, a stark contrast to the

days when NIST stood alone in focusing on physical science. But NIST's influence

continues to be pervasive. In fact, NIST's

importance increases with the number of other federal laboratories (and university

and corporate research organizations)

because many of their measurements need

to be traceable to NIST, and because tech- nological innovation and development

depend more on measurements now than

at any time in the past.

Although the time has passed when U.S.

technology standards automatically

became de facto world standards, NIST

staff continue to work toward ensuring

the marketability of U.S. products worldwide by serving on more than 800 stan- dards committees of national and international organizations. NIST also continues

to explore the frontiers of science and

industry, from atomic physics to electronic books, and the technologies of tomorrow,

such as devices designed and fabricated on

the nanometer scale that offer stunning new capabilities. Because who knows

what tomorrow's equivalent of radio,

atomic clocks, lasers, or the Internet will be ... or from where they will come?

Is the quality of American goods and

services qettinq better? Yes, accordinq to

single most influential document in the modern history of American business"—

the non-profit Council on Competitiveness, The council credits the Malcolm

Baldrige National Quality Award as a

key mechanism in strengthening U.S.

competitiveness.

The Baldrige Award was established

by the U.S. Congress in 1 987 to recognize individual U.S. companies for their achievements and to provide quality awareness and information on successful performance and competitiveness strategies. Since then, the award, managed by

NIST's Baldrige National Quality

Program (BNQP) in conjunction with the

private sector, hqs.become the nation's premier award for business performance

excellence and quality achievement.

Since 1 988, 37 organizations have

received a Baldrige award.

More than 1 .7 million paper copies of

the BNQP Criteria for Performance

Excellence—which has been called "the

have been distributed, reflecting the impact of the program. (Additional copies are available in books, from state and

local award programs, and for download

from the World Wide Web.) The criteria span company leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, infor- mation and analysis, human resource

focus; process management, and business

results. Also in 1 999, the program was

expanded to include educational organizations and health care providers, promising important benefits to consumers. •

State and local quality programsmost modeled after the BNQP— have

increased in number from fewer than 1

0

in 1 991 to more than 50 in 1 999. Fortythree states currently have programs.

Internationally, nearly 60 quality pro- grams are in operation, most modeled

after the Baldrige program, including one in Japan.,
0

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Norman Y. Mineta, Secretary

Technology Administration

Dr. Cheryl L. Shavers, Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Raymond G. Kammer, Director

For more information on NIST, see our web site at viww.nist.gov or

contact Public Inquiries at 301-975-NIST (6478) or inquiries@nist.gov. You also can write to Public Inquiries, 1 00 Bureau Dr., Stop 3460,

Goithersburg, Md. 20899-3460.

NIST Special Publication 956

October 2000

)ject manager: Sharon Shaffer

iter: Laura Ost

Editorial and production assistance: Virginia Covahey, Kelly Talbott, Christina Robinson, Linda Joy, Susan Ford

Design: RCW Communication Design Inc. Printing specialist: Warren Overman

Photo credits: front cover (bottom right), p. 41 , p. 49, p. 52, p. 53 top,

p. 54, and back cover (lower right), Robert Rathe; front cover (left),

p. 31 , p. 37, p. 47, p. 50, and back cover (lower left), Geoffrey Wheeler;

p. 53 bottom, Hamilton Standard; p. 44 (right), p. 45, H. Mark Heifer;

p. 55, Smithsonian Institution, NMAH/Transportation

Sources: This publication is based principally on information from

A^eosures for Progress by Rexmond C. Cochrane (1 966, U.S. Government

Printing Office) and A Unique Institution by Elio Passaglia (1999, U.S. Government Printing Office). Other sources included a variety of NIST

reports and articles published throughout the century and interviews with NIST staff.

iciaimer: Any mention of commercial products is for information only; )oes not imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute Standards and Technology nor does it imply that any products entioned are necessarily the best available for the purpose.