[gumby]

> Ha, the irony! The USA's NIST defines a SI unit to the rest of the world; meanwhile, most of citizens don't know what it is.

...except actually it's the International Committee for Weights and Measures.

However I will help you retain your justifiable sense of ironic superiority: the US is one of the 17 original signatories to the metre convention (in May 1875: http://www.bipm.org/en/about-us/member-states/original_seven...). Also all the US conventional units have been based on the SI metre and kilogramme since 1959. And of course the metric system is familiar to any American in the military and/or who uses illegal drugs.

Although its not part of the BIPM, my favorite such standards organization is the International Earth Rotation Service (justified paying my taxes -- what if they stopped???). Sadly they recently renamed themselves "International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service"

Apropos of little: I used to live quite close (a couple of hundred metres) to an official metre, as there is one on the wall across the street from the French Senate. When the system was originally promulgated, markers were erected around France; you could bring something (piece of string or whatnot) and make your "own" metre to bring home and measure things. There are two or three of them still extant.

[kazinator]

Submission title says "NIST".

> and/or who uses illegal drugs.

:)

[gumby]

Yes, but the article is clear. The headline is from the Washington Post. The apparatus itself was indeed developed by NIST.