An On-line Tour of the Boulder Laboratories

Three scientific agencies of the Department of Commerce are housed in these buildings: the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, formerly the National Bureau of Standards, or NBS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The first construction on the site was the NIST hydrogen liquefier and cryogenic engineering facility, built in 1951. Laboratories for radio science, time and frequency research, plasma physics, laser studies, cryogenics, properties of materials and fluids, chemical engineering and other research soon followed. The site was dedicated by President Eisenhower in 1954.

Some research is conducted away from this site:

• NIST cooperates with the University of Colorado at Boulder in operating JILA;
• NOAA works with CU on the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES);
• NIST operates two standard time and frequency radio stations: WWV-WWVB near Fort Collins, Colorado, and WWVH on the island of Kauai in Hawaii;
• NOAA's research includes the Environmental Research Laboratories and the National Geophysical Data Center of the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service; and
• NTIA has an installation at the Table Mountain site near Boulder.

You may begin your on-line tour by clicking on any of the links below.

Tour Stops

• (1) Optoelectronic Metrology
• (2) Cryoelectronic Metrology
• (3) Atomic Clocks
• (4) Time and Frequency Services
• (5) Instrument Shops
• (6) Building 2 Research
• (7) Electromagnetic Interference
• (8) NIST In The News