Dr. Brown, Mr. Kammer, Dr. Collins, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: We are here today to celebrate a momentous occasion: the centennial anniversary of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It is a pleasure to be with friends and colleagues who have come today to congratulate this institution and its people, and to say thank you for a long and distinguished service to this Nation. I have been asked to speak today about the standards partnership that exists between NIST and ASTM and how that partnership has produced standards for the public benefit. Without doubt, these are the facts. But the history we share has much more to teach us than the fact that we could produce standards together. Governments and private citizens produce standards together all over the world. It is, rather, how we did it. The partnership we are celebrating today is a microcosm, a snapshot of this country's history. It is the story of what set us apart from the rest of the world, the story of how a government and its citizens came to share a common purpose and achieve a common goal in an atmosphere of equanimity and balance.
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