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The Role of the NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, formerly the National Bureau of Standards) was established by an Act of Congress in 1901. Its role is "to assist industry in the development of technology ... needed to improve product quality, to modernize manufacturing processes, to ensure product reliability, and to facilitate rapid commercialization of products based on new scientific discoveries."

As a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce's Technology Administration, NIST's primary mission is to promote U.S. economic growth by working with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements, and standards.

The Time and Frequency Division is an operating unit of the Physics Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Located in Boulder, Colorado at the NIST Boulder Laboratories, the Time and Frequency Division:

• Maintains the primary frequency standard for the United States.
  

• Develops and operates standards of time and frequency.
  

• Coordinates U. S. Time and Frequency standards with other world standards.
  

• Provides time and frequency services for United States clientele.
  

• Performs research in support of improved standards and services.
  

Address:

National Institute of Standards and Technology
Time and Frequency Division
325 Broadway
Boulder, CO 80303

USA

Time Standards and UTC

Universal Time (UT) Family: Universal Time (UT) is the general designation of time scales based on the rotation of the Earth. In applications in which a precision of a few tenths of a second cannot be tolerated, it is necessary to specify the form of UT such as UT1 which is directly related to polar motion and is proportional to the