First in a series: the early years of the national bureau of standards: born to measure

In this first of 4 articles about the early history of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), which in 1988 became the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), I present an overview of the state of standards in America during the first decades of the country's existence, some of the origins of the scientific approach to metrology, and the growth of the NBS through the contributions of some of the outstanding people who participated in metrology.