PROCEEDINGS OF THE 1966 STANDARDS LABORATORY CONFERENCE

ADDRESS OF WELCOME

Allen V. Astin, Director
National Bureau of Standards

It is a real pleasure to me to welcome the National Conference of Standards Laboratories to the new facilities of the National Bureau of Standards at Gaithersburg. As Dr. Huntoon indicated, we look on this meeting as the beginning of a series which will lead up to a formal dedication of the laboratories sometime this fall.

I would like to say a few words about these laboratories in order that you can appreciate a little better the facility in which you are meeting. This site is approximately 20 air miles from the center of Washington, and 25 to 38 road miles, depending upon which route you take. It is located on a tract of 550 acres. The buildings themselves will comprise, when construction now in process is finished, approximately 2,300,000 square feet of floor space, at a total cost of approximately 115 billion dollars. The general design of these facilities provides the central administration and service activities in the center of the site, the general purpose laboratories connected to and surrounding the central service unit, and the special purpose laboratories on the periphery of the site. There are seven of the general purpose laboratories, each of which is approximately 385 feet long and about 105 feet wide. Some have 4 floors, some only 3, depending upon the nature of the site and the nature of the activities that go on in them. These general purpose laboratories are designed for extreme flexibility, with portable partitions and flexible distribution of services, so that almost any type of scientific work can be carried on in them.

The special purpose laboratories which surround the central group are designed around very special types of equipment. There are three of these at the moment. There is an engineering mechanics laboratory designed primarily around a millionpound dead weight machine and a 12-million-pound compression/tension machine. There is a radiation physics laboratory designed primarily around particle accelerators, the major one being a 100million electron volt linear accelerator with a beam power of 50 kilowatts. The third of these is a reactor building. These three special purpose laboratories were the first ones completed, and the

first ones
occupied. We're just beginning the con-
struction of a number of other special purpose
laboratories- a sound laboratory, a chemical en-
gineering laboratory, and a fluid dynamics labora-
tory. We are now in the process of moving into the

general purpose laboratories at the rate of approximately 100 persons a week at the present time. The latest data I have indicates about 43 percent of our Washington staff are now in these buildings and by the early fall we will have approximately 90 percent of our staff here. The remaining staff will stay at the old location for at least another two

years.

The central service facilities contain, in addition to the administrative activities, our library, our meeting facilities, eating facilities and the central instrument shops. We designed this central building to make it possible to hold large meetings here and to provide for the continuing education of our staff. In addition to this auditorium, which seats about 800, there is another seating approximately 300. There are three lecture rooms, each of which seats about 100, and there are smaller conference rooms also. These are all located in the general area between this auditorium and the lobby. We believe that the acquisition of these facilities will make it possible for the Bureau to carry on its research and service activities much more effectively than we were able to carry them on in the old site. We have brought to the design of these laboratories all the modern features that we think will help us in doing the very high precision work which characterizes so much of the scientific activity of the National Bureau of Standards.

I would like next to say a few words about the Bureau's mission and some of our immediate objectives. Since I last spoke to this conference a few years ago out in Boulder, we have had additional responsibilities assigned to us, and we have made major reorganizations in our internal structure in order to facilitate our ability to carry out these additional responsibilities. A little over two years ago, we established four institutes within the National Bureau of Standards, each one dealing with a coherent phase of the Bureau's research and service responsibility.

First is the Institute for Basic Standards, the organizational unit most directly involved with the objectives of your National Conference of Standards Laboratories. The Institute for Basic Standards, of which Dr. Huntoon is the Director, is concerned with the establishment of the central basis of our measurement system in this country and the coordination of this measurement system with those of other nations throughout the world. It deals,

Laboratory made most of us at NBS feel significantly bereaved, we believe that we made a very important contribution to a most important new national agency.

Now I would like to come back for a few minutes to the mission and objectives of the Institute for Basic Standards, which as I said earlier is the organiation most directly concerned with the National Conference of Standards Laboratories. We have been evaluating our objectives over the past several years and trying to define more clearly the responsibilities of the National Bureau of Standards in order that we could carry out more effectively the job that the Congress has assigned us. This has led us to formalize the concept of a National Measurement System, about which you will hear more later from Dr. Huntoon. Essentially, it lets us put in perspective the total national activities involved with measurement and the critical responsibilities of NBS. It is our concern that there be an effective operating system for compatible, interchangeable, reliable measurements to meet the needs of scientists and engineers throughout our industrial set-up and in our universities. The core of the system is of course the International System of Units and the standards based upon these units. By taking the systems approach to our responsibility here, we think we can simplify greatly the things that really have to be done by the National Bureau of Standards. Our main concern is that this system operate smoothly and effectively, and that all essential activities are provided to bring this about in this country. To this extent we seek to set up standards for the basic units, improve their accuracy, extend them to multiples and submultiples, and make sure that there are adequate services for the dissemination of these values.

As many of you know, we have been seeking to improve measurement competence throughout the country, and have been relinquishing tasks when it appeared that it was no longer necessary for the National Bureau of Standards to do them. This general approach has been interpreted in some quarters as indicating that there are certain types of jobs we don't want to do, and that we take a sort of high-brow approach to the more routine calibration services. Actually, as a Federal agency we should not do what can be done adequately by the private economy. To the extent that the private economy has no means of meeting need, and if this need deals with something to make our measurement system operate, then we think it is the job of the

National Bureau of Standards to make sure that this
task gets done. As a result, we have pushed off
some calibration services, and taken on others,
and we may have gone a little far in the former
direction to the impairment of our own efficiency.
We have come to the realization that if we have a
calibration set-up in operation, but used only once
a year, that this is uneconomic. So even though
in general we seek to do only those things that can-
not be done adequately elsewhere, it is necessary
for our efficient operation to make full utilization of
calibration set-ups when we must have them in
existence. We think by doing this we can lower
the cost of performing these services-lower the
cost significantly- and thus provide a much more
effective service to the industry dependent upon
measurement services.

Many people are concerned about the balance
we have in our program between research and
service. We are
an organization that must do
both and do them in reasonable balance. The
measurement activities of IBS must in their general
competence be unexcelled, because if they are
excelled then the standards become ineffectual.
We must have research activities in all the major
frontier areas of science and engineering where
precision is important. To have this competence,
to be alert to needs for extensions in range and
improvements in accuracy, we feel that a very broad
and comprehensive research program is necessary
and this we seek to carry on.
In addition, we must
make sure that all of the services which are essential
to the smooth working of our measurement system
are adequately provided for. So we strive to find
reasonable balance between research and service.
activities, and essentially the only way we can deter-
mine whether the balance is proper is whether or
not there are deficiencies in the service program,
or whether or not we are missing important bets
in extending the science of measurement into new
We hope that within our resources we can
keep these two programs in reasonable and effec-
tive balance. However, both are critically im-
portant and we cannot adequately do either without
the other.

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Finally, I would like to say that I think you have a very interesting program planned for the next few days and I think you would do much better to get ahead with that program than to listen longer to me. So let me say again that I'm very happy to have this opportunity of welcoming you here and I wish you every success in the rest of your meeting.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN