WThe Assay Office is a historic building at 210 Main Street in Boise, Idaho. It is significant for its role in the history of mining in Idaho, and was the first major federal government building in the Idaho Territory. During the first half of the 1860s, Idaho's gold production was the third highest in the nation. Due to the difficulty of transporting bulky, heavy ores the long distance to the nearest U.S. Mint in San Francisco, there was great demand for an assaying office in Idaho. Gold and other precious metals are not mined in a pure form. In order to place a value on an ore, the precious metal must be separated from the impurities. This is what an assay office does.
WThe Birmingham Assay Office, one of the four assay offices in the United Kingdom, is located in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham. The development of a silver industry in 18th century Birmingham was hampered by the legal requirement that items of solid silver be assayed, and the nearest Assay Offices were in Chester and London. Matthew Boulton and Birmingham's other great industrialists joined forces with silversmiths of Sheffield to petition Parliament for the establishment of Assay Offices in their respective cities. In spite of determined opposition by London silversmiths, an Act of Parliament was passed in March 1773, just one month after the original petition was presented to Parliament, to allow Birmingham and Sheffield the right to assay silver. The Birmingham Assay Office opened on 31 August 1773 and initially operated from three rooms in the King's Head Inn on New Street employing only four staff and was only operating on a Tuesday. The first customer on that day was Matthew Boulton.
WBritish Approvals Service for Cables is an independent accredited certification body headquartered in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. Here, the organization's dedicated testing laboratory also operates which is believed to be the largest of its type in Europe. BASEC was established in 1971 and principally provides product certification services for all types of cable and wire, ancillary products and management systems within the cable industry. The organization maintains operations throughout the world including Africa, Middle East, America, Asia and Europe.
WBureau Veritas is a company specialized in testing, inspection and certification founded in 1828. It operates in a variety of sectors, including Building & Infrastructure, Agri-food & Commodities, Marine & Offshore, Industry, Certification and Consumer Products.
WThe Edinburgh Assay Office is the last remaining Assay Office in Scotland and one of four which remain in the United Kingdom.
WThe Germanischer Lloyd SE was a classification society based in the city of Hamburg, Germany. It ceased to exist as an independent entity on September 2013 as a result of its merger with Norway's DNV to become the present-day DNV GL.
WIABG is a German analysis and test engineering company based in Ottobrunn near Munich.
WKiwa NV is a European institution for testing, inspection and certification (TIC), headquartered in Rijswijk, the Netherlands. The institution is highly active in over fifty countries worldwide. Kiwa participates in the safety analysis of many new European and international technologies, as well as the drafting of safety standards for numerous devices and components. Kiwa provides safety-related certification, testing, inspection, auditing, advising and training services to a wide range of clients, including manufacturers, policymakers, regulators, service companies and consumers.
WNSF International is an American product testing, inspection and certification organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
WOtt's Assay Office is a historic assay office located at 130 Main Street in Nevada City, California. The building was constructed in 1851 as a drug store; James J. Ott opened his assay office in the back of the store in 1857. In 1859, Ott assayed a sample of silver ore discovered in the Washoe Country; this ore marked the discovery of the Comstock Lode, and the resulting silver rush eventually led to Nevada's statehood and several advancements in mining technology. The silver rush also gave Ott a reputation as a quality assayer; he ran his office until his death in 1907, and his son continued the business until 1955.
WSGS is a Swiss multinational company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland which provides inspection, verification, testing and certification services. It has more than 89,000 employees and operates over 2,600 offices and laboratories worldwide. It ranked on Forbes Global 2000 in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
WThe Sheffield Assay Office is one of the four remaining assay offices in the United Kingdom, the other three being in London, Birmingham, and Edinburgh.
WStiftung Warentest is a German consumer organisation and foundation involved in investigating and comparing goods and services in an unbiased way. It was founded on 4 December 1964 by the Federal Republic of Germany as an independent foundation under civil law. It is based in Berlin. Beyond its subscriber base and media coverage, content from Stiftung Warentest can be disseminated through word of mouth.
WUL LLC is a global safety certification company headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois. It maintains offices in 46 countries. Established in 1894 as the Underwriters' Electrical Bureau, it was known throughout the 20th century as Underwriters Laboratories and participated in the safety analysis of many of that century's new technologies.
WThe United States Assay Commission was an agency of the United States government from 1792 to 1980. Its function was to supervise the annual testing of the gold, silver, and base metal coins produced by the United States Mint to ensure that they met specifications. Although some members were designated by statute, for the most part the commission, which was freshly appointed each year, consisted of prominent Americans, including numismatists. Appointment to the Assay Commission was eagerly sought after, in part because commissioners received a commemorative medal. These medals, different each year, are extremely rare, with the exception of the 1977 issue, which was sold to the general public.
WThe Wall Street Assay Office is a historic commercial building related to precious metal mining in the western outskirts of Boulder, Colorado in an area known as Wall Street. Once a thriving mining town in Boulder County's foothills area, Wall Street is now home to a few dozen residential properties scattered among the remnants of the Storm King mine. The Wall Street Assay Office sits on Four Mile Canyon Dr, now preserved as the James F. Bailey Assay Office Museum.