For those who are interested, ISO has published a short history - see
http://www.iso.org/iso/2012_friendship_among_equals.pdf.
Although ISO/IEC 80000 reproduces the SI brochure, the CCU, part of the CGPM
is the body that actually produces the SI Brochure. Its membership is listed
at http://www.bipm.org/en/committees/cc/ccu/ .
Martin
-----Original Message-----
From: James [mailto:j...@metricmethods.com]
Sent: 07 January 2015 20:27
To: vliets...@btinternet.com; U.S. Metric Association
Subject: Re: [USMA:54563] Re: Units and ASTM -- long reply
Martin is getting toward a salient point here. I am posting this rather
large note since some newer folks on the mailing list might benefit from and
overview. There are three main groups that I discuss here.
-----
1. First, let us look at international standards developing organizations
(SDOs):
IEC is a similarly independent international organization for standards
development. It was founded in 1906 following discussions with the British
Institution of Electrical Engineers, the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers (AIEE, which evolved to the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers or IEEE), and others. IEC played a major role in
development and adoption of a cgs system that eventually led to the SI. As
its name implies, it focuses on electrical and electronic standards.
ISO is an independent international organization for standards development.
To quote from their website:
The ISO story began in 1946 when delegates from 25 countries met at the
Institute of Civil Engineers in London and decided to create a new
international organization ‘to facilitate the international coordination and
unification of industrial standards’. In February 1947 the new organization,
ISO, officially began operations.
But the roots of ISO go farther back to 1926 when the International
Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA) was formed.
It suspended operations in 1942 due to the war and was revived at the urging
of the UN Standards Coordinating Committee. It focuses on mechanical and
other non-electrical standards.
ISO and IEC have worked jointly on standards that affect both arenas --
electrical and non-electrical. They jointly published the ISO/IEC 80000
series and are developing the ISO/IEC 80003 series on physiological
quantities. (Note, that no space occurs to group digits here!) The 80000
series is coming to be known as the International System of Quantities
(ISQ), a parallel to the International System of Units (SI).
And, of course, we should remember the General Conference on Weights and
Measures (CGPM) and its subsidiary parts. They publish the SI.
Other profession-oriented (and therefore less broad) international
organizations exist, such as the International Union of Pure and Applied
Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics
(IUPAP). These often provide delegates or representatives to the larger and
broader SDOs.
2. Now let's look at national standards coordinating organizations:
The American National Standards Institute is the umbrella group for US SDOs.
To quote their website:
ANSI is the sole U.S. representative and dues-paying member of the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and as a founding
member of the ISO, ANSI plays an active role in its governance.
This relationship is handled under the ANSI/ISOT office. Similar to that is
ANSI's relationship to IEC and that is handled by ANSI's US National
Committee (ANSI/USNC). All US votes on ISO and IEC standards go through
ANSI. Those votes are recommended by appropriate Technical Advisory Groups
(TAGs). TAGs must be funded by sponsors, who pay the ANSI fees to ISO and
IEC for the particular Technical Committees (TCs) that the sponsors
participate in. For example, NIST heads and pays the TAG fees for ISO/TC 12
and IEC/TC 25. Dr. Ambler Thompson (NIST) is the Technical Advisor for each
of those. For the last three years or so I have been serving as his deputy
(DTA). I am also the TA for IEC/TC 1.
The British Standards Institute (BSI) and the Deutsches Institut für Normung
(DIN) similarly are the British and German national organizations for
standards.
3. While we are at it, let's mention the national measurement institutes
(NMIs) which play a major role in all this. They represent their countries
under the Treaty of the Meter, from which the CGPM and its CIPM and BIPM
were formed. Technically, departments of state are the representatives to
the Treaty of the Meter, but generally they defer to their appropriate NMIs
for handling the technical details.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is the US national
standards lab and NMI. It operates under the Department of Commerce on
behalf of the Department of State.
The National Physics Laboratory (NPL) is Britain's NMI and the Physikalisch
Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is Germany's.
-----
I hope that this overview is useful for at least some of our readers by
providing a sort of hierarchy of organizations. I purposely omitted mention
of participating organizations from other countries (France, Italy, Spain,
Russia, etc.) to limit its size. Likewise, I omitted many other
international SDOs such as the ITU.
Sometimes it is easy to get lost in the soup of acronyms (or
initializations) and lose track of who does what for whom. It has taken me
some time to get it all sorted out in my own mind, I know! I will apologize
in advance; surely I have made some errors in the above -- hopefully minor
ones.
Jim Frysinger
Chair, IEEE/SCC14
DTA, US TAG for ISO/TC 12
DTA, US TAG for IEC/TC 25
TA, US TAG for IEC/TC 1
On 2015-01-07 12:48, Martin Vlietstra wrote:
Hi Gene
Part of the problem is that ISO recognises ANSI, not ASTM as the
official US member.
For the record, ISO, BSI and DIN are not Government bodies, they are
private organisations, but have a status within the field of standards
similar to that of the Olympic movement in sport. In much the same
way the IOC only recognises one body representing the US. The Metre
Convention organisations are totally different, they are
inter-government bodies and senior members have diplomatic (or
quasi-diplomatic) status in France (unless they are French citizens)
in much the same way that senior members of the UN staff have
diplomatic or quasi-diplomatic status in New York (unless they are US
citizens)
Thus, if any ASTMS standards are to be adopted by ISO, ASTMS needs to
work with ANSI (or get ANSI to sponsor them).
*From:*owner-u...@colostate.edu [mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu] *On
Behalf Of *mechtly, eugene a
*Sent:* 07 January 2015 15:50
*To:* U.S. Metric Association
*Cc:* U.S. Metric Association
*Subject:* [USMA:54562] Re: Units and ASTM
Martin,
Standards of the American Society for Testing and Materials
(ASTM-International) have historically been written by groups in the
private sectors of the USA, which are interested in a particular
material or subject. Membership and participation in ASTM have become
more global in recent years.
For many years in the past, ASTM has complained that countries in
Europe are reluctant to adopt ASTM Standards, preferring instead to
adopt
similar standards which were developed in Europe by *official*
organizations, sponsored by government(s) e.g. DIN, ISO.
Access to hundreds of documents on both sides of the Atlantic, would
be necessary to assess the current balance of adoptions of standards
developed by ASTM vs standards developed in Europe. Are they beginning
to converge to more universal global standards? Who knows!
Gene Mechtly.
On Jan 6, 2015, at 1:32 PM, Martin Vlietstra <vliets...@btinternet.com
<mailto:vliets...@btinternet.com>> wrote:
Are many ASTM standards are adopted by ISO? I know that many, if not
most ISO standards started life as a national standard.
*From:*owner-u...@colostate.edu <mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu>
[mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu]*On Behalf Of*mechtly, eugene a
*Sent:*06 January 2015 19:15
*To:*U.S. Metric Association
*Cc:*U.S. Metric Association
*Subject:*[USMA:54559] Re: Units and ASTM
Stan,
The practice that I notice most in “Standardization News (SN)” is the
*almost total absence* of units of measurement of any kind, absence of
SI Units and absence of units from outside the SI as well, except in
some of the paid adverting in SN which does seems to favor metric units.
In the hundreds of ASTM Standards, themselves, it may be true that
they “adhere best to the metric units commitment", but that is not evident
is SN.
Even still as a member of ASTM-Committee 43 on SI, I do continue to
receive complimentary copies of SN, but, unfortunately, we do not have
unrestricted access to the ASTM library of standards to observe the
extent of adoption of SI. What is your count of standards in SI vs.
those written outside the SI?
Gene Mechtly.
On Jan 6, 2015, at 9:14 AM, Stanislav Jakuba <jakub...@gmail.com
<mailto:jakub...@gmail.com>> wrote:
*ASTM International*, known until 2001 as the *American Society for
Testing and Materials* (*ASTM*), is an international standards
organization <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards_organization>
that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_standard> for a wide range
of materials, products, systems, and services
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_(economics)>. The organization
is headquarters is in West Conshohocken, PA
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Conshohocken,_Pennsylvania>.
ASTM, founded in 1898 as the American Section of the International
Association for Testing and Materials, predates other standards
organizations such as BSI
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Standards> (1901), DIN
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Institut_f%C3%BCr_Normung>
(1917), ANSI
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Standards_Institute>
(1918) and AFNOR
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_Fran%C3%A7aise_de_Normalisation>
(1926).
That much Wikipedia. For us it is important to know that ASTM is the
U.S. standards developing organization (unlike ANSI) and one of the
largest, and that it adheres best to the metric units commitment. The
reason that I write about it now is that I noticed a deviation from
their policy of "metric units first."
For a while the flagship publication, the Standardization News,
published data with units in the reversed order. Contacting ASTM, I
was informed that it was a mistake and that "we will do that, except
for quotations or a special case (I think sieves is one)."
A good news for 2015.
Stan Jakuba
