The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was founded in 1901 and now part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST is one of the nation’s oldest physical science laboratories. Congress established the agency to remove a major handicap to U.S. industrial competitiveness at the time, a second-rate measurement infrastructure that lagged behind the capabilities of the United Kingdom, Germany, and other economic rivals. Today, NIST measurements support the smallest of technologies, nanoscale devices so tiny that tens of thousands can fit on the end of a single human hair, to the largest and most complex of human-made creations, from earthquake-resistant skyscrapers to wide-body jetliners to global communication networks. (www.nist.gov)
Related Definitions in the Project: The Property and Unit
