The National Institute of Standards & Technology is one hundred years old. NIST continues to be the nation’s timekeeper and the first physical science research laboratory, benefiting industry, space exploration and commerce.
Congress created the National Bureau of Standards on March 3, 1901 at the start of the industrial revolution, the dawn of the Age of Electricity. The NBS mission provided for the measurements and standards needed to resolve and prevent trade disputes and establish standardization. Buying with confidence, that a gallon of milk is precisely one gallon, and that the electric meter accurately measures kilowatts of energy used, has avoided many problems.
Quoting from their Web site:
“Precise time and frequency information is needed by electric power companies, radio and television stations, telephone companies, air traffic control systems, participants in space exploration, computer networks, scientists monitoring data of all kinds, and navigators of ships and planes. These users need to compare their own timing equipment to a reliable, internationally recognized standard. NIST, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, provides this standard for the United States.”
NIST is today at the doorstep of the Information Age. NIST disseminates time and frequency signals over the Internet, via telephone, satellite and by shortwave radio. Since 1923, radio station WWV (Ft. Collins, CO) and WWVH (Kauai, HI since 1948) have broadcast time-intervals to the second, astronomical time corrections, public service announcements regarding marine weather, geophysical alerts, Omega and GPS status and radio propagation information.
In May of 1920, fifty-watt WWV began Friday-evening broadcasts of music concerts from 8:30 to 11 pm out of Washington D.C. KDKA of Pittsburgh, acknowledged as the first commercial broadcast station, didn’t go on air until later that year, November 2nd.
With a Web browser, you can view the correct time from NIST over the Internet. Dialing NIST in Colorado (303-499-7111), your Automated Computer Time Service software (ACTS) will set the connected computer’s clock. Or listen to the voice announced time on a shortwave radio tuned to 2.5MHz, 5, 10, 15, and 20MHz. Accuracy is to one millisecond (a thousandth of a second) if correcting for the distance. The phone method is only 30 milliseconds accurate because of the delay in cross-country telephone lines.
NIST relays their time and frequency information to most of the western hemisphere, via the two weather satellites of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, high above the equator. The time is given in Greenwich Mean Time, now referred to as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
NIST owns and operates a number of specialized GPS receivers and satellite Earth-stations for maintaining the accuracy and synchronization of the atomic clocks aboard the 24 Global Positioning System satellites.
New frequency standards based on laser-cooled ions are expected to exceed the accuracy of the current processes using cesium atomic beams. The first atomic frequency standard in 1950 was based upon ammonia atoms.
Innumerable modern products and services have been benefited by NIST measurement and standards, such as: automated teller machines, atomic clocks, smoke detectors, image processing, X-ray standards for mammography, scanning tunneling microscopy, pollution control, high-speed dental drills and semiconductors, to name a few. US industry is reliant upon dependable units of measure and partnerships with NIST in engineering and physics. From it, innovation, economic growth and quality of life have flourished here.
NIST laboratory researchers from Gaithersburg, MD and Boulder, CO collaborate with industry colleagues, academic institutions and government agencies. Special attention is shifting toward health care science, information technology (IT) and manufacturing tools and methods.
Saving lives and reducing property damage to wind, earthquake and fire is the work of the Building and Fire Research Laboratory. Environmental quality and enhanced US industrial competitiveness is the job of the Chemical Science, Electronics & Electrical Engineering, Information Technology and Manufacturing Engineering Labs.
Advancements in ceramics, polymers, metallurgy, neutron characterization, and materials reliability for microelectronics and automotive uses is the job of the Material Science and Engineer Lab. Here is the only fully equipped cold neutron research facility in this country.
Measurement services and research for electronic, optical and radiation measurement and data standards are focused upon solving problems for industry and commerce. The Weights and Measures, laboratory accreditation and their research library is the department of Technology Services.
For what it’s worth, the proliferating rumor is false. Matt Deutch
from NIST this week wrote in an email, “I want to assure you that nobody
has any intention of discontinuing the WWV/WWVH broadcasts. We are doing a
survey as a periodic check (roughly every 15 years) to see how many are using
our service and if we are meeting their needs.”