Boulder Daily Camera file photo Boulder Daily Camera file photo
BOULDER (AP) – On Sept. 14, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower
became the first sitting president to visit Boulder when he
toured the sparkling new lab facilities that had just been
constructed for the bureau now known as the National Institute
of Standards and Technology. He delivered a dedication speech to
an estimated 10,000 – about half the size of Boulder’s total
population at the time. The content of Eisenhower’s speech is
well known – a transcript was published in the newspaper at the
time and it is easy to find online today – but until recently,
an audio recording of the speech was not so easy to come by.
Now, Boulder’s Carnegie Branch Library for Local History has
digitized a recording of the speech made by KBOL radio. “What he
said has been known for a long time,” said Laura Ost, director
of media relations for the institute in Boulder. “Something
about hearing him say it is very powerful.” Ost’s research into
the 1954 speech led to t