An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Keith Martin is a librarian at the NIST Research Library. He often comes across interesting stories from NIST’s past while working with NIST scientists on their current projects.
In what is currently a large construction zone in the center of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus, the Radiation Physics building is undergoing an
If you drive north from NIST’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus, you will soon reach the famed Mason-Dixon Line marking the border between the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Continue for just a
To save his own life, Joseph Dombey had an idea. As two pirate ships surrounded the ship he was on in the Caribbean Sea in 1794, Dombey scrambled below deck, disrobing as he went. He appropriated the
During World War II, NIST was among those working intensely to develop guided weapons to help the Allies win the war. But before the advent of satellites and GPS, laser targeting or even radar, how
Dulles International Airport, in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., sits on land once owned by NIST. It was on this spot that NIST brought together an eclectic combination of people
November is National Aviation History Month. So it’s fitting that it was also in November, of 1910, that a 12-year-old boy in Baltimore, Maryland, named Hugh Dryden saw an airplane for the first time