International Organization for Standardization(ISO)

The International Organization for Standardization  widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national Standards_organizations" style="background-image: none; color: rgb(6,69,173); text-decoration: none; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial" title="Standards organizations">standards organizations. Founded on 23 February 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial, and commercial standards. It has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Name and abbreviation

The three official languages of the ISO are English, French, andRussian. The organization's logos in two of its official languages, English and French, include the word ISO, and it is usually referred to by this short-form name. The organization says that ISO is not anacronym or initialism for the organization's full name in either official language; rather, recognizing that its initials would be different in different languages, it adopted ISO, based on the Greek word isos (ἴσος, meaningequal), as the universal short form of its name. However, one of the founding delegates, Willy Kuert, recollected the original naming question with the comment: "I recently read that the name ISO was chosen because 'iso' is a Greek term meaning 'equal'. There was no mention of that in London!"

History

Memory plaque of founding ISA in Prague

The organization today known as ISO began in 1926 as the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA), whose focus was mainly mechanical engineering.^[6] It was disbanded in 1942 during World War II but was reorganized under its current name, ISO, in 1946, when delegates from 25 countries met at the Institute of Civil Engineers inLondon; the new organization officially began operations in February 1947.

ISO is a voluntary organization whose members are recognized authorities on standards, each one representing one country. The bulk of the work of ISO is done by the 2,700 technical committees, subcommittees, and working groups. Each committee and subcommittee is headed by a Secretariat from one of the member organizations