[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 28, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1694-S1695]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            NIST CENTENNIAL

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to celebrate the 
centennial of the founding of one of this country's technology 
treasures, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST.
  For 100 years, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has 
helped to keep U.S. technology on the cutting edge. It has been a 
reliable and critical source of assistance to industry, science, and 
government. NIST's research, measurement tools, and technical services 
are integrated deeply into the many systems and operations that drive 
our national economy.
  There are few aspects of our everyday lives and no corner of this 
country that is not touched by the work of NIST. In my State of 
Connecticut and in every State across this country, factories, 
communication and transportation networks, laboratories, hospitals, 
educational institutions, gas stations, coffee shops, and the extended 
enterprises of both the traditional and new economies are dependent on 
the work of NIST, its talented staff, and its ahead-of-the-curve 
research.
  In order to understand the role that NIST has played in helping to 
make this country the economic powerhouse it is, we should take a 
little trip back in time, say about 100 years, to the beginning of the 
last century. It was a time before air conditioning, before plastics, 
before airplanes. Teddy Roosevelt had just become President and a 
middle-class income was no more than $5,000. We were at the dawn of the 
age of technology and we were excited about the opportunities for the 
rapidly evolving advances in science and technology.
  We were also very confused. There were no authoritative national 
standards for any quantities or products. For example, there were eight 
separate values for the gallon. It was difficult, sometimes impossible, 
for Americans to conduct fair transactions or to get parts to fit 
together properly. Construction materials were of an uneven quality. 
Household products were unreliable. This commercial chaos hindered 
economic growth.
  As the 1800s rolled into the 1900s, this country was in a precarious 
position. We were dependent on the research and scientific work of 
other countries. Few Americans were working as scientists, because most 
scientific work was performed overseas. American instruments were 
shipped abroad to be calibrated, and American scientists and engineers 
had to wait for their ships to come in, literally, before they could 
move ahead. The confusion and reliance on other nations was 
handicapping the United States in competition with trade rivals, such 
as Germany and England, countries which already had their own national 
measurement laboratories.
  I am pleased to say that as they entered the 20th century, our 
predecessors in Congress acted wisely to remedy this commercial chaos 
and scientific competitive disadvantage. In 1901, in the final hours of 
its final session, the 56th Congress voted overwhelmingly to tackle a 
pervasive national need by creating the National Bureau of Standards, 
now known as NIST. Working closely with the leading scientists and 
industrialists of the time, this body, with great foresight, endorsed 
the concept of a national standards laboratory just as the century was 
beginning.
  A century later, NIST has become an organization of 3,200 employees, 
plus 2,000 field agents who partner with NIST in all 50 states and 
Puerto Rico, 1,600 guest researchers and another 1,500 industrial 
research partners. A lot has happened to science and technology over 
the past century and NIST has helped to lay the foundations for our 
nation's progress.
  I would like to spend just a few minutes reviewing some key 
contributions the Institute has made to industry, science, technology, 
national security and consumers. In the early years of the century, 
thousands of train derailments were caused by broken rails, wheel 
flanges and axles. NIST ran tests, and reported that the steel industry 
had not established uniform practices in manufacturing rails and 
wheels. By 1930, as better steel went into rails and trains, with 
NIST's help in standardizing materials and processing, the rate of 
accidents from these causes fell by two-thirds.
  At the end of the century, industry had become increasingly dependent 
on information and knowledge and NIST continued to be relevant in that 
area. For example, financial services, telecommunications companies, 
and hardware and software products relied heavily on the data 
encryption standard issued by NIST in 1977, the first publicly 
available standard of this type and the first cryptographic algorithm 
endorsed by the Federal Government. Today, NIST is coordinating a 
successor standard, having run an Olympics-type worldwide competition.
  The Global Positioning System and other communications and navigation 
technologies are more accurate, thanks to improved timekeeping, a trend 
promoted by NIST's operation of the first atomic clock, which was based 
on the ammonia molecule, in 1949. Progress in cooling atoms to within 
the tiniest fraction of ``absolute zero'' enabled NIST to build one of 
the world's most accurate atomic clocks, NIST F-1, which is used to 
maintain the nation's time standard.
  NIST's critical role for industry has not been limited to research. 
Its Manufacturing Extension Partnership program has been boosting the 
competitiveness of this country's 361,000 smaller manufacturers since 
1989. In 1999, more than 23,000 firms took advantage of its services, 
increasing or retaining billions of dollars in sales, saving hundreds 
of millions of dollars in costs, and creating or retaining tens of 
thousands of jobs.

[[Page S1695]]

  Another relatively recent and important addition to NIST's work has 
been its Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program that has 
helped thousands of organizations to improve their overall performance. 
The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence have been used by tens 
of thousands of organizations and they have been called the ``single 
most influential document in the modern history of American business.''

  The once-troubled $7 billion U.S. printed wiring board industry, with 
its 200,000 jobs, was turned around by a research project co-funded by 
NIST's Advanced Technology Program. The joint venture led to dramatic 
efficiencies in research and development, accelerated research, and 
produced significant technological advances. ATP has played a key role 
in pushing ahead emerging critical technologies.
  NIST's work extends to national security. During military conflicts, 
NIST was called on to perform numerous tasks, ranging from development 
of a synthetic substitute for rubber to improving submarine 
communications to helping design the ``Bat,'' the first fully automated 
guided missile to be used successfully in combat. Important initial 
research on the atomic bomb was carried out by NIST, which served as a 
central control lab for determination of the properties of uranium.
  Like industry and our security forces, consumers also count heavily 
on NIST. For example, withdrawals from automated teller machines are 
among the billions of dollars worth of electronic data transaction that 
have been secured for many years with the first publicly available data 
encryption standard, issued by NIST in 1977. Today, NIST is 
coordinating the development of an even more powerful successor 
standard.
  Today, patients receive accurate radiation doses in disease diagnosis 
and treatment today thanks to NIST radiation measurement and standards 
activities under way since the 1970s. NIST's contributions to the safe 
medical use of radiation began many years ago. It included efforts to 
help bring about the 1931 X-ray safety code, which set guidelines for 
protective devices for patients and operators.
  The U.S. death rate from fires declined by 50 percent between the 
early 1970's and late 1990's, in large part because smoke detectors are 
now installed in 95 percent of homes. NIST made this improvement 
possible by developing, with Underwriters Laboratories' participation, 
the first fire performance standard for smoke detectors and 
recommendations on number, type and placement of the extinguishers.
  It is clear that over its first 100 years, NIST has become part of 
the fabric of the U.S. economy and society. Our homes, factories, 
laboratories, hospitals, schools, police and fire departments, and 
military all have benefitted from NIST's technical handiwork. NIST's 
importance to this country is as true today as at any time in the 
agency's 100 year history.
  Now we must look to the future as we celebrate this highly valued 
institution. Science, technology and society obviously have been 
transformed over the century and NIST's challenges are changing, too.
  What's next for NIST? As science and technology advance, the need for 
new and more accurate measurements also grows. To meet the exacting 
needs of electronic manufacturers, for example, NIST researchers have 
developed methods for counting electrons, one by one. And to open the 
frontier of nanotechnology, where feature sizes are hundreds and even 
thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, they are 
devising molecular rulers, derived from interatomic spacings in 
perfectly ordered crystals.
  Standards have become crucial for efficient business entry into 
emerging technologies. Standards have also become a tool of other 
nations for creating mercantile trade barriers. NIST's role in setting 
sound global technology standards is becoming critical to U.S. 
performance in the global economy.
  Information Technology security is fundamental to our electronic 
infrastructure, and NIST is addressing those challenges with special 
attention to helping other government agencies to improve the security 
of their systems.
  With tough global competition and a growing productivity gap compared 
with larger manufacturers, small firms will sorely need even greater 
the access to a nationwide system of technical and business assistance 
offered by NIST's Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
  The Baldrige criteria for organizational improvement are just taking 
hold in the education and healthcare sectors, and manufacturers and 
service firms continue to find these evolving criteria to be effective 
guideposts to help them meet increasing customer demands for 
excellence.
  The new technologies fostered over the past decade by NIST's cost-
sharing of high-risk research through the Advanced Technology Program, 
will be emerging at a quickening pace over the next several years as 
companies turn these enabling technologies into marketplace offerings.
  As NIST moves into its second century, it is clearly committed to 
working with industry, building the science, technology and business 
infrastructure needed to ensure future economic prosperity and a higher 
quality of life for all Americans. We are building a new economy in 
this century that is based on innovation. NIST is playing an important 
role in support of the private sector, in building that new economy.
  As with our predecessors a century ago, it is the responsibility of 
this body to support NIST in meeting those challenges. As NIST 
celebrates its centennial and looks forward to even greater 
accomplishments, let us in this body reaffirm our commitment to 
creating new generations of science, technology, economic growth and 
security. Congress has played an important role in NIST's first century 
of success. Now as NIST begins its second century of service to U.S. 
industry and all Americans, it is Congress' responsibility to keep this 
treasure a strong resource that will help prepare us for the century 
ahead.

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