20 March 2001 Source: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aaces002.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Congressional Record: February 28, 2001 (Senate)] [Page S1694-S1695] From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:cr28fe01-171] 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. ____________________