New
Directions
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 preoccupied
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.
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To
contribute to the development of standards for medical and surgical
devices, NIST researchers studied materials used in artificial
joints. |
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 mid-1970s. 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 mid-1980s, 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.)
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 17 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 reinforced plastics.
In continuing
its original mission of cooperating with and supporting the private
sector, NIST emphasized programs designed to assist emerging industries
such as biotechnology, space science, and optical communications.
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©
H. Mark Helfer |
A
krypton lamp similar to the one in the photo was calibrated
with NIST's help for the Hubble Space Telescope. |
Biotechnology
became a byword of the 1980s with the development of DNA fingerprinting
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 an 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
producing standards to ensure accuracy in forensic DNA analysis.
This technology was one of dozens 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.
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 low-gravity 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 radiometric 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.
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 pervasive, 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.
©
Geoffrey Wheeler |
Lasers
were used to measure the response speed of optical communication
devices. |
A key part of
the federal government's solution to this problem was NIST, which
had been reorganized 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 labora-tory for
providing the measurements, calicalibrations, and quality assurance
techniques which underpin U.S. commerce, technological progress,
improved product reliabil-ity and manufacturing processes, and public
safety."
To go along
with the expanded 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 Tech-nology Program
(ATP) was designed to encourage private investments in innovative
technologies with the potential for broad national benefit that
otherwise 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 network 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.
Next Section
(Promoting Economic Growth)
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Date created:
11/2/00
Last updated: 11/6/00
Contact: inquiries@nist.gov
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