The development of novel techniques is critical for maintaining a state-of-the-art core competency in atomic physics and readiness for evolving programmatic needs. We have carried out a three-year effort to develop novel spectroscopic instrumentation that added new dimensions to our capabilities for measuring energy levels, radiative transition probabilities, and electron-ion excitation processes. The new capabilities created were in areas that heretofore had been inaccessible to scientific scrutiny and included high-resolution spectroscopy of hard x rays, femtosecond lifetime measurements, measurements of transition probabilities of long-lived metastable levels, polarization spectroscopy, ultra-precise determinations of energy levels, and the establishment of absolute wavelength standards in x-ray spectroscopy. Instrumentation developed during the period included a transmission-type crystal spectrometer, a flat-field EUV spectrometer, and the development and deployment of absolutely calibrated monolithic crystals. The new capabilities enabled very sensitive tests of atomic wave functions, of calculations of magnetic sublevel populations, and of fundamental theories in uncharted regimes, and provided the basis for developing new diagnostic techniques of high-density plasmas.