From radio to rockets, NIST has set standards of century

by Susan L. Sutherland

I appreciate the opportunity to offer a few words about the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on the occasion of its 100th anniversary as a federal agency.

I am quite new to NIST, only having arrived here last August after spending most of my career with another agency familiar to Boulder residents, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). What has impressed me about NIST in the short time I have been here is the intelligence and dedication of its staff. The nation’s taxpayers can rest assured that they are receiving their full value from NIST’s hard-working scientists, engineers, technicians and support personnel.

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NIST started out as the National Bureau of Standards on March 3, 1901. For more than 50 years, its primary location was in Washington, D.C. The Boulder laboratories were begun in the 1950s with the transfer of radio and cryogenic (super cold) research programs from Washington headquarters.

It was a red letter day for Boulder on Sept. 14, 1954 when President Eisenhower motored from the summer White House in Denver to dedicate the new NBS laboratories. (It is the only time a sitting president has ever visited Boulder).

If there is one consistent thread throughout the history of NBS/NIST, it is that the agency has helped American industry become better and more competitive. When the agency was formed, the United States was changing from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Fledgling American factories needed consistent measurements and standards to produce quality products. The whole concept of interchangeable parts requires precise machining. American consumers faced a bewildering array of measurements at this time. The New York borough of Brooklyn, for example, had four different definitions of the foot. Standards were needed!

Perhaps the most dramatic example of the need for standards occurred in 1904 when more than 1,500 buildings were destroyed in the great Baltimore fire. When fire companies from neighboring communities and states arrived to help, they could not attach their hoses to Baltimore’s fire hydrants ? there were more than 600 sizes and variations in fire hose couplings in the United States at that time. Newly formed NBS participated subsequently in the selection of a national standard for couplings.

As each decade of the 20th century unfolded, NBS participated in the great technological developments that propelled the American economy. In the 1920s, NBS was a pioneer in radio research. One of the first American radio stations was WWV, which broadcast precise signals so that commercial stations could keep on their assigned frequencies. In 1945, time signals were added to WWV, and it still broadcasts time and frequency information from its transmitter in Wellington. (There’s no need to have a fancy receiver, just dial (303) 499-7111 to get the broadcast signal).

In the 1930s, NBS turned its attention to aviation by helping to develop the instrument landing system. It also operated a crime laboratory long before the FBI developed one. And in 1935, an NBS handwriting expert helped to convict Bruno Richard Hauptmann of kidnapping Col. Charles Lindberg’s baby.

Work at NBS in the early 1940s was devoted to war-related research, including the development of the radio proximity fuse for rockets and bombs and work on the first fully automated guided missile ever used successfully in combat. After the war, NIST pursued research in computers, atomic clocks, instrumentation and, for the Space Age, cryogenic fluids for rocket propulsion.

One of the reasons for establishing the Boulder laboratories was to build a plant to produce liquid hydrogen for the old Atomic Energy Commission. At the time, it was a hush-hush project because the liquid hydrogen was going to Los Alamos for the hydrogen bomb project. But that use ended quickly, and the facility became the focus of a world-famous cryogenic engineering center that produced much of the cryogenic data on which the space program rested.

Another reason for establishing the Boulder laboratories was to move radio research into a quieter area of the country ? the airwaves were getting too crowded in Washington, D.C. From these two beginnings ? cryogenics and radio research ? have come today’s research programs at NIST. Superconducting electronics, microwaves, optical fibers, atomic clocks, magnetics, materials, chemical data, quantum physics and information technology occupy the minds of today’s researchers at NIST.

And yet another reason for moving to Boulder was to be close to the University of Colorado and its research programs. This was crystallized in 1962 when CU and NBS formed JILA, a joint institute for basic physics research. This productive relationship was topped off in 1995 when the institute announced its researchers ? one from NIST and one from CU ? had discovered a new form of matter first predicted by Albert Einstein in the 1920s. In addition, NIST researchers serve as adjunct faculty at CU, and NIST has a program that offers research experience to undergraduate and graduate students at CU.

When NBS came to Boulder in the mid-?50s, it was the first in a long line of technical and research institutions that have found Boulder a good place to live and work. And the brainpower residing in these centers and at the university has been a great draw for high-tech companies. In fact, some of these companies have been started by researchers leaving the halls of academic and government research.

So, Boulder has benefited doubly. The research centers have provided the city with a stable, well-paid work force, and the entrepreneurs who have migrated from these centers have given Boulder a reputation as a home to high-tech enterprise. Who could ask for anything more?Susan L. Sutherland is the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Boulder Laboratories.