Not many tourists to Washington, D.C., look for the Federal Bureau of Standards offices. It’s the Capitol and the White House, the Supreme Court Building or the Smithsonian most of us want to see when we go there. Yet, at the Bureau of Standards offices something very important is stored, something that impacts your life and mine every single day. Have you ever bought the materials for a new project? When you did, most likely you purchased so many inches or feet or yards. Or, you stopped to buy gasoline for your car and purchased it at a certain price per gallon. Just what is an inch, foot, or yard anyway, or a gallon or millimeter or milligram? It is a nationally-accepted standard of measurement, the perfect example of which is stored intact at the Federal Bureau of Standards in the natio…