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Fun Facts about NIST

NIST scientists have earned three Nobel Prizes over the last 11 years.

NIST led the development of performance standards and placement recommendations for smoke detectors, now in 94 percent of American homes and saving thousands of lives, or that half of home fire deaths occur in the 6 percent of homes with no smoke alarms?

NIST's weights and measures services, a job assigned to the Federal government in the Constitution, provide the basis for the fairness and efficiency of sales.  These services underpin the efficiency of about half the US economy, or about $7 trillion of the US gross domestic product.

NIST's Internet Time Service is used by NASDAQ members to time-stamp hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stock trades and other financial transactions conducted very business day.

More than 3,000 law enforcement officers have been spared from death or disabling injury as a result of NIST-developed standards for ballistic-resistant body armor ("bullet-proof" vests).

Closed-captioning for people with impaired hearing, now featured on all TV sets, was co-invented at NIST, earning it an Emmy Award in 1980.

 

For more fun facts about NIST, visit http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/nist_did_you_know.cfm.