NBS Publishes History In keeping with the spirit of the Dedication, NBS released Measures for Progress, a history of the first 50 years of NBS. The book recounts and documents the critical role played by the Bureau and in particular the major contributions of individual scientists of the staff in the explosive growth of America's science and industry over the first half of the twentieth century. LEGISLATION AFFECTING NBS Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 NBS has been assigned important responsibility in the Department of Commerce's activities under the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act passed by the Congress in 1966. NBS is responsible for identifying undue proliferation in the weights, measures, or quantities in which any consumer commodity is being distributed for retail sale. The Bureau must also determine whether this proliferation impairs the consumers' ability to make value comparisons. When NBS determines that proliferation does exist, it will invite the manufacturers, packagers, and distributors of the commodity to participate in the development of a voluntary industry packaging standard. If, one year after this request is made, it becomes apparent that no standard is going to be published, or if a published standard is not being observed, the Secretary of Commerce must report the situation to the Congress. He must state what efforts have been made to arrive at a voluntary standard and then recommend whether the Congress should enact legislation providing regulatory authority to deal with the situation. Pending Legislation At the end of the fiscal year, there were five bills under consideration by the Congress which, if passed, would affect the National Bureau of Standards: The Fire Research and Safety Act of 1967 • Amendments to the Flammable Fabrics Act • International Standards • Metric System Study The proposed Fire Research and Safety Act of 1967 would amend the Organic Act of the National Bureau of Standards to authorize a comprehensive fire research and safety program. In the program, NBS would gather comprehensive fire data, conduct intensive laboratory and field research on the nature of fire, educate and train fire pro tection and firefighting personnel, and support demonstrations of improved and experimental fire protection and safety techniques. The proposed amendments to the existing Flammable Fabrics Act would provide a mechanism for continued evaluation and revision. when necessary, of the flammability requirements under the Act. Revision would keep the requirements up-to-date and give to the consumer the most effective protection against clothing fires that the state of technology in any time period could offer. The amendments would also provide for extension of the Act to cover flammable interior furnishings, and authorize investigation and research to extend knowledge and strengthen ability to combat flammable fabrics problems. The Standard Reference Data legislation would give to the Secretary of Commerce (and thence to NBS) the responsibility of extracting from the scientific literature important data on the properties of materials, important physical constants, and so forth. The Act would provide for critical evaluation of the data, to identify the "best values.” Such evaluation would compress the amount of material a researcher has to wade through, saving American science and industry much time and money, and also give the researcher more confidence in the numbers he uses. The proposed International Standards Act is designed to promote and support U.S. participation in international standards development. If it is passed, the Department of Commerce, and NBS in particular, would seek to increase the participation of American industry, technical and trade societies, and private standards making bodies in the international standards making procedure. This participation would insure that the U.S. point of view is not overlooked in the writing of international standards, and thus prevent the U.S. from being frozen out of world markets because of restrictive standards. The Metric System legislation would authorize a study of the effect upon the U.S. of increased use of the Metric System throughout the world and development of recommendations for an action program to deal with the problem. EXPANSION OF THE RESEARCH ASSOCIATE PROGRAM The NBS Research Associate Program is an important vehicle for cooperation with industry. Under this program, a company can send one or more of its scientists to NBS to work with Bureau people on problems of mutual interest. The problems must be non-proprietary in nature, and broad enough to be of interest to a broad segment of American industry. Both the Bureau and the sponsoring company benefit from this cooperation. Because the company pays the salary of the Associates, the Bureau's resources are multiplied at little cost to itself. The visiting researchers get the benefit of NBS facilities and expertise in their work, and they return to their companies with broadened background and capability. Recently NBS has been putting increased emphasis on the Research Associate Program, and industry has been participating enthusiastically. Among the companies sponsoring new Research Associates are AiResearch Manufacturing Company, American Cyanamid Company, Control Data Corporation, Dow Chemical Company, International Business Machines Corporation, Ferro Corporation, The Procter and Gamble Company, and the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Company. GENERAL TRENDS Future requirements of American industry, commerce and science dictate the future of NBS. These requirements, and means of monitoring and evaluating them, have received particular attention during the past year. Ability to fulfill the traditional NBS role of leadership in developing the measurement methods and standards needed for industry, commerce, and science is being severely challenged by the rapid advances and wide application of science and technology. As industry and society are becoming more complex and technically oriented, NBS programs are also changing. Even in specifically technical areas such as glass, paper, ceramics, metallurgy and corrosion, NBS programs have changed in the last few years from a craft. orientation to a science-based orientation. As a result, the output of data, standards and methodology have much greater precision, meaning and usefulness. The trend is for NBS to become increasingly concerned with broader social, economic, and political problems and programs of the Nation. Solutions of many of these problems-in areas such as transportation, pollution, resource development, education, power development, and health-depend on technology, and in particular the ability to measure, control, produce, or evaluate meaningful parameters in order to diagnose, treat, engineer and evaluate safe, reliable, useful products. NBS now assumes responsibility for developing data for decision making on such questions as what transportation system is best suited for the northeast corridor of the United States, what are the performance requirements for low cost housing, and other systems problems involving a combination of technology, economics, logistics, and sociology. In support of these new activities, NBS has taken advantage of the rapid advance in management tools and procedures and has developed a technical analysis program which provides service not only for NBS operations and programs but also for other Government agencies to aid in their decisions, efficiency and effectiveness. To some, these newer system responsibilities may seem removed from historical Bureau interest in measurement. In fact, these new responsibilities are simply an extension of the measurement concepts and disciplines into new areas needing evaluation and quantification. Research on the safety performance of vehicles is concerned with evaluating in a scientific manner the performance of the parts, subsystems and systems of an automobile or other vehicle-as well as the people involved. In most cases methodology used in measuring the important phenomena may be identical to that used in the more traditional work of NBS. Standards, measurement methods, and procedures are now being developed for the computer industry, transportation networks, and industrial operations in much the same manner that the electrical and mechanical or ceramic industries were assisted in the past. In all cases, the end product is a number or set of numbers which defines material, device, or system performance. These numbers are the basis for informed decision and action. THE NATIONAL MEASUREMENT SYSTEM All of this activity points up the need for looking at the complex measurement process as a system. Measurement is a basic and necessary activity in all aspects of human endeavor, and especially in science and technology. In order to define meaningful goals and insure a smoothfunctioning national measurement activity, decisions must be made in light of the systems concept. Measurement activities are rapidly changing and increasing in complexity, so much so that it would be useful to take a fresh look at our national measurement system as a whole and up-date our understanding of how its components interact. The following section describes the Bureau's current concepts of the national measurement system. THE NATIONAL MEASUREMENT SYSTEM The rapid advancement of technology in the twentieth century has been responsible for the development of a wide variety of complex systems, ranging from those of hardware-such as automobiles, aircraft, missiles, and computers-to social systems involving both hardware and people in various combinations of networks. Examples of these social systems include the Nation's communication, transportation, defense, education, medical, and legal systems. A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO MEASUREMENT The national measurement system is still another social system which has grown up in the United States, albeit with little formal recognition. Recently, there has been increased awareness and understanding of the all-pervasive nature of the Nation's measurement activities and of their economic importance. In their totality these social systems-the transportation system, the legal system, and so on-form the environment in which the individual must live and function. Diverse as they are, these systems have important features in common. Each has multiple interfaces with the others and with their counterparts in other nations, and each consists of two fundamentally different sub-systems closely interacting to form the total system. The two interlocking sub-systems are the "intellectual system" and the "operational system." The intellectual, or conceptual, system consists of a body of rules, laws, conventions, procedures, or definitions ordered into a unified rational structure. This type of system is universally applicable, much like the laws of physics and chemistry. It forms the basis for the construction and functioning of the operational system. The operational system consists of a set of functional elements each having certain inputs and outputs. These elements interact with each other under the guidance of some central control to accomplish a particular function or mission. In any social system, the functional elements and subsystems are organizations of people. Each such organization performs an appropriate function, in accordance with the corresponding intellectual system, to accomplish the overall mission. Our national measurement system is part of an international system used by all leading nations of the world, and is the result of a worldwide progression toward increasing sophistication of measurement, both in concepts and in operation. The National Bureau of Standards is a vital element in the measurement system. NBS serves as a focal point for many of the Nation's measurement activities. |