National Institute of Standards and Technology

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, known as NIST, is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. It is the national metrological institute of the United States, a non-regulatory measurement standards laboratory. Congress founded it in 1901 as the Bureau of Standards, charged with providing standard weights and measures and acting as the national physical laboratory, and it was named the National Bureau of Standards until 1988. Its headquarters are in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and it runs a second laboratory site in Boulder, Colorado, that was dedicated in 1954. Its programs span nanoscale science and technology, engineering, information technology, neutron research, material measurement and physical measurement.