National Center for Appropriate Technology
organization
The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) is an American organization headquartered in Butte, Montana, that is dedicated to appropriate technology and sustainability. Projects specifically deal with sustainable energy, sustainable agriculture and food, sustainable living, farm energy, and climate change. The center was created in 1976 by the merger of several energy conservation programs started after the 1973 oil crisis.
It carries out projects within the United States, especially in poor rural areas. It has regional offices in Davis, California; Fayetteville, Arkansas; San Antonio, Texas; Jackson, Mississippi; and Keene, New Hampshire.
Its headquarters is located in the former Silver Bow County Poor Farm Hospital, which is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
ATTRA
Since the farm crisis in the 1980s, NCAT has operated ATTRA, the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service. The program goal is to provide technical assistance to farmers throughout the nation in succeeding with sustainable, organic and regenerative agriculture.
ATTRA was originally an acronym for "Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas" which has since fallen out of use and is just "ATTRA".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “National Center for Appropriate Technology” is organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through National, Center and Appropriate, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “organization” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6971309. VIAF identifies the subject as 127830160. The Library of Congress control number is n79076491. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976 and 1973.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “National Center for Appropriate Technology”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow National Center for Appropriate Technology primary sources, National Center for Appropriate Technology archive and National research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “National Center for Appropriate Technology”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “National Center for Appropriate Technology” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.