The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from approximately 90 countries, one from each country, including the U.S.

ISO is a non-governmental organization established in 1947. The mission of ISO is to promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technical and economic activity.

Structure:

Consists of some 170 technical committees, 640 subcommittees, 1800 working groups and 10 ad hoc study groups. These represent the viewpoints of manufacturers, vendors and users, engineering professions, testing laboratories, public services, governments, consumer groups and research organizations in each of the 90 member countries.

International standards:

Some 8000 international standards and technical reports have been published by ISO since 1980, representing some 65000 pages of technical text in one language. (Status: June 30,1991) They include information processing, graphic industry and photography (18000 pages), mechanical engineering (16600), basic chemicals (5200) and non-metallic materials (4600), International relations: Some 450 international organizations are in liaison with ISO technical committees and sub-committees.

How it all started

ISA's activities ceased in 1942, owing to the Second World War. Following a meeting in London in 1946, delegates from 25 countries decided to create a new international organization "the object of which would be to facilitate the international coordination and unification of industrial standards". The new organization, ISO, began to function officially on 23 February 1947.

The first ISO standard was published in 1951 with the title, "Standard reference temperature for industrial length measurement".

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