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.