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Voice of America Chooses Virtual Museum as “Website of the Week”

The NIST Virtual Museum was selected as Website of the Week by the Voice of America (VOA), an international multimedia broadcasting service funded by the United States Government.

Website of the Week is a feature of the VOA’s Our World program, a weekly science and technology show which airs seven times every weekend. The feature is also translated and broadcast by the station’s language services on a frequent basis.

VOA broadcasts over one thousand hours of news, informational, educational, and cultural programs each week to an audience of over 115 million people worldwide. The VOA produces and broadcasts its programs in more than 40 languages through radio broadcasts, satellite television, and via the Internet.

Mary-Deirdre Coraggio, Chief of the Information Services Division (ISD), was interviewed by Art Chimes, VOA’s producerhost of the Our World program. The interview aired on November 26, 2007. During the interview, Ms. Coraggio stated that the NIST Virtual Museum "showcases some of the best parts of NIST’s history."

Additionally, when asked about the Virtual Museum’s History of Time and Frequency exhibit featuring timekeeping and the job of redefining time and other essential measurements over time, Ms. Coraggio highlighted such objects as the Shortt (pendulum) clock, the quartz crystal frequency standard, and the atomic clock.

One final highlight from the interview was the mention of the Standardization of Women’s Clothing exhibit featuring standards used in establishing the sizes used for manufacturing women’s clothing, which is based on the measurements of 15,000 American women taken decades ago. The measurements were originally taken to help the then-new mail order industry.

These and other historical treasures and virtual artifacts await your discovery, here, at the NIST Virtual Museum. The interview can be accessed through VOA’s news site.

For more information about the NIST Virtual Museum, contact Keith Martin. For information about the interview contact Ms. Coraggio.

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date created: May 23, 2002
last update: October 16, 2008