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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical science laboratory programs that include nanoscale science and technology, engineering,
information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology syste ...
,
neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the atomic nucleus, nuclei of atoms. Since protons and ...
research, material measurement, and physical measurement. From 1901 to 1988, the agency was named the National Bureau of Standards.


History


Background

The Articles of Confederation, ratified by the colonies in 1781, provided:
The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective states—fixing the standards of weights and measures throughout the United States.
Article 1, section 8, of the
Constitution of the United States The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the nati ...
, ratified in 1789, granted these powers to the new Congress: "The Congress shall have power ... To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures". In January 1790, President George Washington, in his first annual message to Congress, said, "Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to." Washington ordered Secretary of State
Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
to prepare a
Plan for Establishing Uniformity in the Coinage, Weights, and Measures of the United States The "Plan for Establishing Uniformity in the Coinage, Weights, and Measures of the United States" was a report submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 13, 1790, by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. At the First United States Cong ...
, later referred to informally as the Jefferson Report. On October 25, 1791, Washington again appealed Congress:
A uniformity of the weights and measures of the country is among the important objects submitted to you by the Constitution and if it can be derived from a standard at once invariable and universal, must be no less honorable to the public council than conducive to the public convenience.
In 1821, President John Quincy Adams declared, "Weights and measures may be ranked among the necessities of life to every individual of human society.". Nevertheless, it was not until 1838 that the United States government adopted a uniform set of standards.NBS special publication 447
-Retrieved September 28, 2011
From 1830 until 1901, the role of overseeing weights and measures was carried out by the Office of Standard Weights and Measures, which was part of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in the Department of the Treasury.Records of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
,
National Archives and Records Administration The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It ...
website, (Record Group 167), 1830–1987.
Theberge, Captain Albert E., ''The Coast Survey 1807–1867: Volume I of the History of the Commissioned Corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration'', "THE HASSLER LEGACY: FERDINAND RUDOLPH HASSLER and the UNITED STATES COAST SURVEY: THE REBIRTH OF THE SURVEY," no publisher listed, NOAA History, 1998.


Bureau of Standards (1901–1988)

In 1901, in response to a bill proposed by Congressman
James H. Southard James Harding Southard (January 20, 1851 – February 20, 1919) was an American lawyer and politician who served six terms as a U.S. Representative from Ohio from 1895 to 1907. Biography Born near Toledo, Ohio, in Washington Township, Lucas ...
(R, Ohio), the National Bureau of Standards was founded with the mandate to provide standard weights and measures, and to serve as the national physical laboratory for the United States. Southard had previously sponsored a bill for metric conversion of the United States.John Perry, ''The Story of Standards'', Funk and Wagnalls, 1953, Library of Congress Cat. No. 55-11094, p. 123 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Samuel W. Stratton as the first director. The budget for the first year of operation was $40,000. The Bureau took custody of the copies of the kilogram and meter bars that were the standards for US measures, and set up a program to provide metrology services for United States scientific and commercial users. A laboratory site was constructed in Washington, DC, and instruments were acquired from the national physical laboratories of Europe. In addition to weights and measures, the Bureau developed instruments for electrical units and for measurement of light. In 1905 a meeting was called that would be the first "National Conference on Weights and Measures". Initially conceived as purely a metrology agency, the Bureau of Standards was directed by Herbert Hoover to set up divisions to develop commercial standards for materials and products.page 133 Some of these standards were for products intended for government use, but product standards also affected private-sector consumption. Quality standards were developed for products including some types of clothing, automobile brake systems and headlamps, antifreeze, and electrical safety. During
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, the Bureau worked on multiple problems related to war production, even operating its own facility to produce optical glass when European supplies were cut off. Between the wars, Harry Diamond of the Bureau developed a blind approach radio aircraft landing system. During World War II, military research and development was carried out, including development of radio propagation forecast methods, the proximity fuze and the standardized airframe used originally for Project Pigeon, and shortly afterwards the autonomously radar-guided Bat anti-ship guided bomb and the Kingfisher family of torpedo-carrying missiles. In 1948, financed by the United States Air Force, the Bureau began design and construction of SEAC, the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer. The computer went into operation in May 1950 using a combination of vacuum tubes and solid-state diode logic. About the same time the Standards Western Automatic Computer, was built at the Los Angeles office of the NBS by Harry Huskey and used for research there. A mobile version, DYSEAC, was built for the Signal Corps in 1954.


National Institute of Standards and Technology (from 1988)

Due to a changing mission, the "National Bureau of Standards" became the "National Institute of Standards and Technology" in 1988. Following September 11, 2001, NIST conducted the official investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. Following the 2021
Surfside condominium building collapse On June 24, 2021, at approximately 1:22 a.m. EDT, Champlain Towers South, a 12-story beachfront condominium in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Florida, United States, partially collapsed, causing the death of 98 people. Four people were ...
, NIST sent engineers to the site to investigate the cause of the collapse. In 2019, NIST launched a program named NIST on a Chip to decrease the size of instruments from lab machines to chip size. Applications include aircraft testing, communication with satellites for navigation purposes, and temperature and pressure.


Constitution

NIST, known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), is a
measurement standards laboratory Metrology is the scientific study of measurement. It establishes a common understanding of units, crucial in linking human activities. Modern metrology has its roots in the French Revolution's political motivation to standardise units in Fr ...
, also known as the National Metrological Institute (NMI), which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. The institute's official mission is to: NIST had an operating budget for fiscal year 2007 (October 1, 2006September 30, 2007) of about $843.3 million. NIST's 2009 budget was $992 million, and it also received $610 million as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. NIST employs about 2,900 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support and administrative personnel. About 1,800 NIST associates (guest researchers and engineers from American companies and foreign countries) complement the staff. In addition, NIST partners with 1,400 manufacturing specialists and staff at nearly 350 affiliated centers around the country. NIST publishes the '' Handbook 44'' that provides the "Specifications, tolerances, and other technical requirements for weighing and measuring devices".


Metric system

The Congress of 1866 made use of the metric system in commerce a legally protected activity through the passage of
Metric Act of 1866 The Metric Act of 1866, also known as the Kasson Act, is a piece of United States legislation that legally protected use of the metric system in commerce from lawsuit, and provided an official conversion table from U.S. customary units. Histo ...
. On May 20, 1875, 17 out of 20 countries signed a document known as the ''Metric Convention'' or the ''Treaty of the Meter'', which established the International Bureau of Weights and Measures under the control of an international committee elected by the General Conference on Weights and Measures.


Organization

NIST is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and operates a facility in Boulder, Colorado, which was dedicated by President Eisenhower in 1954. NIST's activities are organized into laboratory programs and extramural programs. Effective October 1, 2010, NIST was realigned by reducing the number of NIST laboratory units from ten to six. NIST Laboratories include: * Communications Technology Laboratory (CTL) * Engineering Laboratory (EL) * Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) * Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) * Material Measurement Laboratory (MML) * Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) Extramural programs include: * Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), a nationwide network of centers to assist small and mid-sized manufacturers to create and retain jobs, improve efficiencies, and minimize waste through process improvements and to increase market penetration with innovation and growth strategies; * Technology Innovation Program (TIP), a grant program where NIST and industry partners cost share the early-stage development of innovative but high-risk technologies; * Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, which administers the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation's highest award for performance and business excellence. NIST's Boulder laboratories are best known for NIST‑F1, which houses an atomic clock. NIST‑F1 serves as the source of the nation's official time. From its measurement of the natural resonance frequency of cesium—which defines the second—NIST broadcasts time signals via longwave radio station WWVB near Fort Collins, Colorado, and shortwave
radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
s WWV and WWVH, located near Fort Collins and Kekaha, Hawaii, respectively. NIST also operates a
neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the atomic nucleus, nuclei of atoms. Since protons and ...
science user facility: the
NIST Center for Neutron Research The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
(NCNR). The NCNR provides scientists access to a variety of neutron scattering instruments, which they use in many research fields (materials science, fuel cells, biotechnology, etc.). The SURF III Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility is a source of synchrotron radiation, in continuous operation since 1961. SURF III now serves as the US national standard for source-based radiometry throughout the generalized optical spectrum. All
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
-borne, extreme-ultraviolet observation instruments have been calibrated at SURF since the 1970s, and SURF is used for measurement and characterization of systems for extreme ultraviolet lithography. The Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) performs research in nanotechnology, both through internal research efforts and by running a user-accessible cleanroom
nanomanufacturing Nanomanufacturing is both the production of nanoscaled materials, which can be powders or fluids, and the manufacturing of parts "bottom up" from nanoscaled materials or "top down" in smallest steps for high precision, used in several technologies s ...
facility. This "NanoFab" is equipped with tools for lithographic patterning and imaging (e.g., electron microscopes and
atomic force microscope Atomic force microscopy (AFM) or scanning force microscopy (SFM) is a very-high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy (SPM), with demonstrated resolution on the order of fractions of a nanometer, more than 1000 times better than the op ...
s).


Committees

NIST has seven standing committees: *
Technical Guidelines Development Committee The Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology supports the Election Assistance Commission in the United States by providing recommendations on voluntary standards and guidelines related ...
(TGDC) * Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazards Reduction (ACEHR) * National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee (NCST Advisory Committee) * Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board (ISPAB)
Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology
(VCAT) * Board of Overseers for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA Board of Overseers) * Manufacturing Extension Partnership National Advisory Board (MEPNAB)


Projects


Measurements and standards

As part of its mission, NIST supplies industry, academia, government, and other users with over 1,300 Standard Reference Materials (SRMs). These artifacts are certified as having specific characteristics or component content, used as calibration standards for measuring equipment and procedures, quality control benchmarks for industrial processes, and experimental control samples.


''Handbook 44''

NIST publishes the ''Handbook 44'' each year after the annual meeting of the National Conference on Weights and Measures (NCWM). Each edition is developed through cooperation of the Committee on Specifications and Tolerances of the NCWM and the Weights and Measures Division (WMD) of the NIST. The purpose of the book is a partial fulfillment of the statutory responsibility for "cooperation with the states in securing uniformity of weights and measures laws and methods of inspection". NIST has been publishing various forms of what is now the ''Handbook 44'' since 1918 and began publication under the current name in 1949. The 2010 edition conforms to the concept of the primary use of the SI (metric) measurements recommended by the Omnibus Foreign Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988.


Homeland security

NIST is developing government-wide identity document standards for federal employees and contractors to prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to government buildings and computer systems.


World Trade Center collapse investigation

In 2002, the National Construction Safety Team Act mandated NIST to conduct an investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2 and the 47-story 7 World Trade Center. The "World Trade Center Collapse Investigation", directed by lead investigator Shyam Sunder, covered three aspects, including a technical building and fire safety investigation to study the factors contributing to the probable cause of the collapses of the WTC Towers (WTC 1 and 2) and WTC 7. NIST also established a research and development program to provide the technical basis for improved building and fire codes, standards, and practices, and a dissemination and technical assistance program to engage leaders of the construction and building community in implementing proposed changes to practices, standards, and codes. NIST also is providing practical guidance and tools to better prepare facility owners, contractors, architects, engineers, emergency responders, and regulatory authorities to respond to future disasters. The investigation portion of the response plan was completed with the release of the final report on 7 World Trade Center on November 20, 2008. The final report on the WTC Towers—including 30 recommendations for improving building and occupant safety—was released on October 26, 2005.


Election technology

NIST works in conjunction with the
Technical Guidelines Development Committee The Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology supports the Election Assistance Commission in the United States by providing recommendations on voluntary standards and guidelines related ...
of the Election Assistance Commission to develop the
Voluntary Voting System Guidelines The Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) are guidelines adopted by the United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC) for the certification of voting systems. The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Technical Guidelines Devel ...
for voting machines and other election technology.


Cybersecurity Framework

In February 2014 NIST published the NIST Cybersecurity Framework that serves as voluntary guidance for organizations to manage and reduce cybersecurity risk. It was later amended and Version 1.1 was published in April 2018. Executive Order 13800, Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure, made the Framework mandatory for U.S. federal government agencies.


People

Four scientific researchers at NIST have been awarded
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
s for work in physics: William Daniel Phillips in 1997, Eric Allin Cornell in 2001,
John Lewis Hall John Lewis "Jan" Hall (born August 21, 1934) is an American physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics. He shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics with Theodor W. Hänsch and Roy Glauber for his work in precision spectroscopy. Biography Born ...
in 2005 and
David Jeffrey Wineland David Jeffrey Wineland (born February 24, 1944) is an American Nobel-laureate physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physics laboratory. His work has included advances in optics, specifically laser-cooling tra ...
in 2012, which is the largest number for any US government laboratory. All four were recognized for their work related to laser cooling of atoms, which is directly related to the development and advancement of the atomic clock. In 2011, Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on quasicrystals in the Metallurgy Division from 1982 to 1984. In addition, John Werner Cahn was awarded the 2011 Kyoto Prize for Materials Science, and the National Medal of Science has been awarded to NIST researchers Cahn (1998) and Wineland (2007). Other notable people who have worked at NBS or NIST include: * Milton Abramowitz * James Sacra Albus * David W. Allan *
Kathryn Beers Kathryn L. Beers is an American polymer chemist. Beers is Leader of the Polymers and Complex Fluids group in the Materials Science and Engineering Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her research interests include mic ...
* Norman Bekkedahl *
Julie Borchers Julie Ann Borchers (born 1962) is an American physicist. Education Borchers received her B.S. in physics at the University of Dayton in 1984. She completed a Ph.D. at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1990. Borcher's doctoral advis ...
* Ferdinand Graft Brickwedde * Lyman James Briggs * Edgar Buckingham * John M. Butler * William Weber Coblentz *
Ronald Collé Ronald Collé (born February 11, 1946) is a specialist in nuclear and radiochemistry, radionuclidic metrology, and the development of standards. He has worked at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from 1976 to 2003 and from ...
* Philip J. Davis *
Marla Dowell Marla Lorraine Dowell (born 1965) is an American physicist who is Director of the NIST Communications Technology Laboratory and NIST Boulder Laboratory. Early life and education Dowell became interested in science and mathematics as a child. He ...
* Hugh Latimer Dryden *
Jack R. Edmonds Jack R. Edmonds (born April 5, 1934) is an American-born and educated computer scientist and mathematician who lived and worked in Canada for much of his life. He has made fundamental contributions to the fields of combinatorial optimization, pol ...
*
Ugo Fano Ugo Fano (July 28, 1912 – February 13, 2001) was an Italian American physicist, notable for contributions to theoretical physics. Biography Ugo Fano was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Turin, Italy. His father was Gino Fano, a professo ...
*
Charlotte Froese Fischer Charlotte Froese Fischer (born 1929) is a Canadian-American applied mathematician and computer scientist noted for the development and implementation of the Multi-Configurational Hartree–Fock (MCHF) approach to atomic-structure calculations an ...
*
Tim Foecke Timothy Foecke (born 1963) is an American metallurgist, former Research Professor at the University of Maryland - College Park, and founder and former director of the NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting at the National Institute of Standards ...
*
John Cantius Garand Jean Cantius Garand (; January 1, 1888 – February 16, 1974), also known as John C. Garand, was a Québec-born American designer of firearms who created the M1 Garand, a semi-automatic rifle that was widely used by the U.S. Army and U.S. M ...
*
Katharine Blodgett Gebbie Katharine Blodgett Gebbie (July 4, 1932 – August 17, 2016) was an American astrophysicist and civil servant. She was the founding Director of the Physical Measurement Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), ...
* Nada Golmie *
Douglas Rayner Hartree Douglas Rayner Hartree (27 March 1897 – 12 February 1958) was an English mathematician and physicist most famous for the development of numerical analysis and its application to the Hartree–Fock equations of atomic physics and the c ...
* Magnus Rudolph Hestenes *
Marcia Huber Marcia Lynn Huber is an American chemical engineer. She is a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Huber's research interests include developing models for the thermophysical properties of fluids. She was awarded the ...
*
Marilyn E. Jacox Marilyn Esther Jacox (April 26, 1929 – October 30, 2013) was an American physical chemist. She was a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Fellow and Scientist Emeritus in the Sensor Science Division. Education Jacox was born ...
*
Deborah S. Jin Deborah Shiu-lan Jin (; November 15, 1968 – September 15, 2016) was an American physicist and fellow with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Professor Adjunct, Department of Physics at the University of Colorado; and a ...
* John Kelsey * Russell A. Kirsch *
Cornelius Lanczos __NOTOC__ Cornelius (Cornel) Lanczos ( hu, Lánczos Kornél, ; born as Kornél Lőwy, until 1906: ''Löwy (Lőwy) Kornél''; February 2, 1893 – June 25, 1974) was a Hungarian-American and later Hungarian-Irish mathematician and physicist. Acco ...
* Wilfrid Basil Mann * William Clyde Martin *
Willie E. May Willie E. May is an American chemist who was director of the United States' National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology. He has been active in international organizat ...
* William Frederick Meggers *
Christopher Roy Monroe Christopher Roy Monroe (born October 19, 1965) is an American physicist and engineer in the areas of atomic, molecular, and optical physics and quantum information science, especially quantum computing. He directs one of the leading research an ...
*
James G. Nell James G. "Jim" Nell (born 1938) is an American engineer. He was the principal investigator of the Manufacturing Enterprise Integration Project at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and is known for his work on enterprise i ...
*
Frank William John Olver Frank William John Olver (December 15, 1924 – April 23, 2013) was a professor of mathematics at the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland who worked on asymptotic analysis, speci ...
*
Anne Plant Anne L. Plant is an American biochemist. She is a Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology where she was previously chief of the biosystems and biomaterials division. Plant investigates measurements and models of cell populati ...
*
E. Ward Plummer Earl Ward Plummer (October 30, 1940 – July 23, 2020) was an American physicist. His main contributions were in surface physics of metals. Plummer was a Professor of Physics at Louisiana State University and the University of Pennsylvania prio ...
* Jacob Rabinow *
Ana Maria Rey Ana Maria Rey is a Colombian theoretical physicist, professor at University of Colorado at Boulder, a JILA fellow, a fellow at National Institute of Standards and Technology and a fellow of the American Physical Society. Rey was the first Hi ...
* Richard J. Saykally *
Charlotte Emma Moore Sitterly Charlotte Emma Moore Sitterly (September 24, 1898 – March 3, 1990) was an American astronomer. She is known for her extensive spectroscopic studies of the Sun and chemical elements. Her tables of data are known for their reliability and are st ...
*
Irene Ann Stegun Irene Ann Stegun (February 9, 1919 – January 27, 2008) was an American mathematician at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) who edited a classic book of mathematical tables called ''A ...
* William C. Stone *
Sheldon M. Wiederhorn Sheldon M. Wiederhorn (May 4, 1933 – June 3, 2021) was an American materials scientist affiliated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Biography Wiederhorn was born on May 4, 1933, in The Bronx, the son of immigrants. He r ...
*
Winnie Wong-Ng Winnie Kwai-Wah Wong-Ng () is a Chinese-American physical chemist. She is a research chemist at the ceramics division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her research includes energy applications, crystallography, thermoelectri ...
* Helen M. Wood * Ellen Voorhees


Directors

Since 1989, the director of NIST has been a Presidential appointee and is confirmed by the United States Senate, and since that year the average tenure of NIST directors has fallen from 11 years to 2 years in duration. Since the 2011 reorganization of NIST, the director also holds the title of Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology. Fifteen individuals have officially held the position (in addition to four acting directors who have served on a temporary basis).


Patents

The NIST holds patents on behalf of the Federal government of the United States, with at least one of them being custodial to protect public domain use, such as one for a
Chip-scale atomic clock A chip scale atomic clock (CSAC) is a compact, low-power atomic clock fabricated using techniques of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and incorporating a low-power semiconductor laser as the light source. The first CSAC physics package was d ...
, developed by a NIST team as part of a DARPA competition.


Controversy regarding NIST standard SP 800-90

In September 2013, both '' The Guardian'' and ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported that NIST allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to insert a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator called Dual EC DRBG into NIST standard SP 800-90 that had a kleptographic backdoor that the NSA can use to covertly predict the future outputs of this pseudorandom number generator thereby allowing the surreptitious decryption of data. Both papers report that the NSA worked covertly to get its own version of SP 800-90 approved for worldwide use in 2006. The whistle-blowing document states that "eventually, NSA became the sole editor". The reports confirm suspicions and technical grounds publicly raised by cryptographers in 2007 that the EC-DRBG could contain a kleptographic backdoor (perhaps placed in the standard by NSA). NIST responded to the allegations, stating that "NIST works to publish the strongest cryptographic standards possible" and that it uses "a transparent, public process to rigorously vet our recommended standards". The agency stated that "there has been some confusion about the standards development process and the role of different organizations in it...The National Security Agency (NSA) participates in the NIST cryptography process because of its recognized expertise. NIST is also required by statute to consult with the NSA." Recognizing the concerns expressed, the agency reopened the public comment period for the SP800-90 publications, promising that "if vulnerabilities are found in these or any other NIST standards, we will work with the cryptographic community to address them as quickly as possible”. Due to public concern of this cryptovirology attack, NIST rescinded the EC-DRBG algorithm from the NIST SP 800-90 standard.


Publications

* The ''
Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology The ''Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology'' is the flagship peer-reviewed scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of s ...
'' is the flagship scientific journal at NIST. It has been published since 1904. * First published in 1972, the '' Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data'', is a joint venture of the American Institute of Physics and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.


See also

*
AD-X2 AD-X2 was an additive purported to extend lead-acid automotive battery life, marketed by California bulldozer operator Jess M. Ritchie in the late 1940s and early 1950s. After it was declared a fraud by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), a ...
*
Advanced Encryption Standard process The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the symmetric block cipher ratified as a standard by National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States (NIST), was chosen using a process lasting from 1997 to 2000 that was markedly more ...
* Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) * Inorganic Crystal Structure Database *
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in A ...
(ISO) ** ISO/IEC 17025used by testing and calibration laboratories * International System of Units, see International Bureau of Weights and Measures * Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge * National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) *
National Software Reference Library The National Software Reference Library (NSRL), is a project of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) which maintains a repository of known software, file profiles and file signatures for use by law enforcement and other organiz ...
* NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions * NIST hash function competition * Samuel Wesley Stratton Award * Scientific Working Group *
Smart Grid Interoperability Panel Smart Grid Interoperability Panel or SGIP is an organization that defines requirements for a smarter electric grid by driving interoperability, the use of standard, and collaborating across organizations to address gaps and issue hindering the dep ...
* Technical Report Archive & Image Library for NIS-digitized series * WWV (radio station) * Virtual Cybernetic Building Testbed *
VAMAS VAMAS is the Versailles project on advanced materials and standards that aim to establish the scientific foundation for standardised measurements, testing, specifications, and standards through international collaborative projects. VAMAS promotes ...


References


External links


Main NIST website

NIST
in the Federal Register
NIST Publications Portal

The Official US Time

NIST Standard Reference Data

NIST Standard Reference Materials

NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST)

Manufacturing Extension Partnership

NIST on a chip

SI Redefinition

Scientific and Technical Research and Services
account on USAspending.gov * Historic technical reports from the National Bureau of Standards (and other Federal agencies) are available in th
Technical Report Archive and Image Library (TRAIL)
* Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978, Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology, Number 40
United States Standards of Weights and Measures, Their Creation and Creators, by Arthur H. Frazier
{{Authority control Buildings and structures in Gaithersburg, Maryland United States Department of Commerce agencies Government agencies established in 1901 Cryptography organizations 1901 establishments in the United States