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NIST Museum & Archives

Online Exhibits

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Online Exhibits  I  Archived Exhibits  I  Artifacts of Interest

Explore the exhibits by clicking on their titles below.

Online Exhibits

Standardizing an Empire
Credit: NIST Museum

Standardizing an Empire

Debuted October 2023

Defining the International System of Units (SI)
Credit: NIST Museum

Defining the International System of Units

Debuted 2023

World's Smallest Soccer Field Exhibit: Nano Robots Take the Field exhibit title thumbnail

World's Smallest Soccer Stadium: Nano Robots Take the Field

Debuted 2022

 

 

 

Videodiscs and the Scanning Capacitance Microscope exhibit tile

Video Discs and the Scanning Capacitance Microscope: A failed consumer product solves a semiconductor metrology challenge

Debuted 2023

 

Luminous Script Signs: The Origin of the 'Neon Sign' Title Banner

Luminous Script Signs: The Origins of the 'Neon Sign'

Debuted 2022

  

The Forgotten Radium Scientists Title Teaser with Damon, Torrey, Bower, Yung-Kwai, and Alderton portraits

The Forgotten Radium Scientists

Debuted 2022

  

NIST's 120th Anniversary Celebrating 13 Moments in NIST History, A Special NIST Museum Exhibit

NIST's 120th Anniversary: Celebrating 13 Decades of NIST History

A Special NIST Museum Exhibit

Debuted 2021

  

Hero Image for The Pandemic Poet and Other Tales exhibit

The Pandemic Poet and Other Tales: From a NIST 'Genealogy' Project

Debuted 2021

  

Title: Landmarks in the History of Natural Catastrophe Modeling: An exhibit from Johns Hopkins University and the NIST Museum; Quote: “In catastrophe modeling, the length of the list of unknowns makes one very humble… but decisions must still be made, if only on order of magnitude estimates.” — Don G. Friedman; Graphics of the Don G. Friedman calculating risk formula

Landmarks in the History of Natural Catastrophe Modeling: An exhibit from Johns Hopkins University and the NIST Museum

Debuted 2020

  

Is the Fare Fair? exhibit Hero image for exhibit link. Black and White image of 1921 Checker taxi in Washington, D.C. with the exhibit title 'Is the Fare Fair? Taximeter Testing in the 1920s and Today' in yellow at the top of the image.
Credit: Sarah Reeves/NIST

Is the Fare Fair? Taximeter Testing in the 1920s and Today

Debuted 2017

 

French Nested Weights with "Beautiful Measures: from the NIST Museum Collection" text overlaying

 

Beautiful Measures: From the NIST Museum Collection

Debuted 2017

  

NIST’S MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING DIVISION (MSED) CENTENNIAL exhibit title

NIST's Material Science and Engineering Division (MSED) Centennial

Debuted 2014

Archived Exhibits

NIST Virtual Museum
NIST Virtual Museum

Below are links to the NIST Virtual Museum legacy exhibits that have been archived on the Internet Archive WayBack Machine.

Artifacts of Interest

This small collection provides a glimpse of the over 1,400 items in the NIST Museum Collection. Click on the image information to learn more about each item.

Meter Bar 27
Meter Bar 27
Luminous Script Signs
Luminous Script Signs
Guarded Field Ionization Chamber
Guarded Field Ionization Chamber
Magnetic Trap
Magnetic Trap
Quartz Oscillator
Quartz Oscillator
Radiosonde
Radiosonde
Committee Kilogram
Committee Kilogram
Uranyl Nitrate Crystals
Uranyl Nitrate Crystals
Proving Ring
Proving Ring
Topografiner
Topografiner

 

Contacts

Created September 22, 2016, Updated October 6, 2023