GAITHERSBURG, Md.—Visiting the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is always immeasurably fun. The agency’s headquarters—a green and sprawling 234-hectare campus, just a jaunt from Washington, DC—is studded with scientific wonders. There’s the building in which scientists repeatedly build other little buildings and then try to destroy them in blazing infernos. There’s the net-zero energy house. There’s a decades-old wall just for studying how different types of stone age. And there’s the bunch of laboratories 12 meters below the ground on a structurally isolated floor that is cushioned by pneumatic air-springs which prevent any geological jostling from disturbing super-sensitive scientific instruments and the assembly of atomic structures. Last but not least are the scads of scientific gadgets, doodads, and data that scientists use to measure, study, and standardize our natural and manufactured world.

On a recent sweltering day in June, I headed to the administration building. It might sound boring, but this building houses the agency’s rich archive and museum of NIST treasures. Since the agency was founded in 1901—then called the National Bureau of Standards—NIST has amassed a collection of scientific instruments, objects, and historic artifacts unlike any other.

Perhaps the largest and most striking piece sits in the building’s lobby: a warped steel beam salvaged from the World Trade Center. It’s overwhelmingly tall and as emotionally heavy as one might expect. But it’s also very curved. The once perfectly straight beam was sent to NIST so the agency’s scientists could help figure out why it lost its shape. It’s common for NIST to receive bits and pieces of national tragedies to understand and prevent them; the agency also has a critical piece of the Silver Bridge, which collapsed during rush hour in 1967, killing 46.

Tragedies

The Bat Missile

Straight back from the lobby, through a sun-filled hallway, is the museum and the NIST library that's open 24-7. There are somewhere in the ballpark of 200 items on display, with around 1,300 more in storage. The first that comes into view is a World War II-era glide bomb that was—no joke—originally designed to be piloted by pigeons.