Turning
100: NIST Helps to Keep U.S. Technology at the Leading Edge
The
new millennium opens with the Information Age shining on its horizon,
just as the last century dawned with the Age of Electricity. Across
this 100-year span of economy-building, life-improving advances,
the National Institute of Standards
and Technology has been a solid contributor to the nation's
technological progress-in industry, science, and government.
Consider
image processing, DNA diagnostic "chips," smoke detectors, and automated
error-correcting software for machine tools. Or take, for example,
atomic clocks, X-ray standards for mammography, the scanning tunneling
microscope, pollution-control technology, and high-speed dental
drills. Then, there's the National Conference on Weights and Measures,
the organization of state and local officials who assure fairness
in sales of more than $4 trillion worth of goods and services-from
deli meats to gasoline to railroad freight.
NIST
helped these and many other innovations sprout and spread across
the nation and the globe. A broad and varied stream of benefits
has resulted, such as decreases in train derailments (thanks to
standards for ensuring the quality of steel); smoother-riding, lower-maintenance
automobiles (the result of technology that improves the fit of assembled
parts); and reductions in sulfur-dioxide emissions (through improved
measurements in the oil industry).
Since
1901, when it began as the National Bureau of Standards, NIST has
served as a behind-the-scenes specialist. Its research, measurement
tools, and technical services are integrated deeply into many of
the systems and operations that, collectively, drive the economy-manufacturing
cells, satellite systems, communication and transportation networks,
laboratories, factories, hospitals, businesses, and the extended
enterprises of the new economy.
For
instance:
- Activities
ranging from stock trading to space navigation all rely on NIST's
Measurement and Standards Laboratories for high-accuracy timekeeping-recently
enhanced by a new NIST-built atomic clock that will neither gain
nor lose a second in nearly 20 million years. Each day, via the
Internet, NIST receives more than 20 million automated requests
for time.
- U.S. makers
of printed wiring boards-the laminated boards that are the nervous
system of nearly every electronic product-reversed declines in
world market share by exploiting quality- improving, cost-reducing
innovations resulting from a five-year cost-sharing research partnership
enabled by NIST's Advanced Technology Program.
- A rural Wisconsin
manufacturer of gaskets averted a plant shutdown and the loss
of 350 local jobs by greatly improving productivity-one of thousands
of practical benefits realized through performance-improving technical
assistance provided by NIST's
Manufacturing Extension Partnership and its affiliates.
- The "Baldrige
Index"-made up of publicly traded companies that have won the
Malcolm Baldrige National
Quality Award, which NIST manages in cooperation with the
private sector- outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 by almost
5 to 1 in 1999, continuing a six-year streak that attests to the
business value of applying the criteria developed by the widely
modeled award program.
These
examples illustrate how NIST strives to meet the high expectations
set for it in 1900 by the congressional committee that recommended
its creation:
"[N]o
more essential aid could be given to manufacturing, commerce, the
makers of scientific apparatus, the scientific work of the Government,
of schools, colleges, and universities than by the establishment
of the institution proposed in this bill."
At
the Turn of a New Century
NIST
was made to measure, a job that continues to grow in importance.
And since the late 1980s, it has added new roles-all designed to
further the nation's technological progress and to strengthen its
economic performance.
Today,
NIST's Measurement
and Standards Laboratories must keep up with rising demand for
technical support, fueled, in part, by increasing world trade. Since
the agency was established, U.S. merchandise exports have risen
from less than $2 billion to more than $680 billion. About 80 percent
of world merchandise trade is affected by standards and regulations,
which often insist on conformance with specified measurement requirements.
Also
driving demand for diverse kinds of measurement support are advances
in science, the accelerat- ing pace of innovation, the emergence
of new industries-such as nanotechnology and wireless communications-and
the increasing sophistication of mature industries-such as steel
and automobiles. Most significant of all is the proliferation of
information technology and its insinuation into nearly every facet
of the economy and society. This ongoing trend has spawned needs
for entirely new types of measurements and testing methods.
In
the late 1980s, Congress assigned NIST a new set of responsibilities,
broadening the Institute's focus on the health of the nation's technology
infrastructure and helping U.S. industry to counter competitive
challenges. The Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award, created in 1987, is widely credited
with making quality a national priority.
In
1989, NIST established the first federally funded extension centers
to help small manufacturers improve their capabilities and performance-a
necessity for survival in the global marketplace. Today, the Manufacturing
Extension Partnership is a nationwide network of more than 400 not-for-profit
centers and field offices that, in 1999, provided technical assistance
to nearly 27,000 smaller manufacturers. Since 1990, NIST's Advanced
Technology Program, a partnership program that encourages U.S.
companies in all sectors to stay ahead of the innovation curve,
has selected 468 industry-led projects for funding, including 157
joint ventures. The ATP's cost-shared support of high-risk, high-economic
impact industrial R&D has enabled important technical advances across
a broad landscape-biotechnology, composite materials, wireless communications,
manufacturing, software, and many, many other fast-moving technology
fields. On the threshold of its second century, NIST is committed
to building the advanced science and technology infrastructure needed
to ensure future prosperity and the global competitiveness of U.S.
industry.
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Date created:
11/2/00
Last updated: 11/15/00
Contact: inquiries@nist.gov
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