Safety for the Household

The National Bureau of Standards did not become ANSI. Founded in 1901, NBS was a federal agency responsible for measurement standards and scientific research. It became the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1988, with an expanded industrial competitiveness mission. ANSI followed a separate lineage: the American Engineering Standards Committee, established in 1918, became the American Standards Association in 1928, then the United States of America Standards Institute in 1966 and ANSI in 1969. The organizations perform complementary functions: NIST supplies measurement science and technical expertise; ANSI coordinates private voluntary consensus standards and represents American interests in international standardization.