National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics - the pre-cursor to NASA. Many foil shapes, ducts, and other aeronautical thingies were researched and designed under its direction, and are assigned an identification as such.



As an aside - there's an official document called the "Spinoff". It details the technology transfers from NASA development programs to the private sector - anything from remote sensing to medical devices to computer technology and beyond. One of my favorites was seeing that a manufacturer of windsurfers had made use of a NASA foil and wing refinement effort to make better fins for their boards.