When the U.S. Congress formed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1958, it mandated in the charter that NASA and its contractors must report to industry any new, commercially significant technologies developed in the course of their R&D, so that engineers, managers, and scientists could use this valuable information to improve their competitiveness and productivity. For more than three decades, this has been accomplished primarily through the publication of NASA Tech Briefs.
First issued as single sheet reports in the 1960s and converted to a magazine format in the 1970s, NASA Tech Briefs has been a joint publishing venture of NASA and Tech Briefs Media Group (New York City) since 1985, a pioneering government-private sector partnership that has saved taxpayers millions of dollars in publishing costs while dramatically increasing the magazine’s reach to OEM design/development engineers and managers.
Today, NASA Tech Briefs’ qualified circulation surpasses 190,000.
The monthly magazine features exclusive reports of innovations developed by NASA and its industry partners/contractors that can be applied to develop new/improved products and solve engineering or manufacturing problems. Authored by the engineers or scientists who did the work, the briefs span a wide array of fields, including electronics, physical sciences, materials, computer software, mechanics, machinery/automation, manufacturing/fabrication, mathematics/information sciences, and life sciences.
NASA Tech Briefs also contains feature articles on successful NASA spinoffs, profiles of NASA tech transfer resources, news briefs, and application stories. Regular columns describe new patents, industry products, software, and literature.
Famous quotes containing the word nasa:
“If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create something the size of NASA to make one.”
—H. Ross Perot (b. 1930)