Home > International Electrotechnical Commission

Many of its standards are developed jointly with the ISO.

The IEC is made up of representatives of national standards bodies. The IEC was founded in 1906 and currently has more than 60 participating countries. Originally located in London, the commission moved to its current headquarters in Geneva in 1948.

The IEC was instrumental in developing and distributing standards for units of measurement, particularly the gauss, hertz, and weber. They also first proposed a system of standards, the Giorgi System , which ultimately became the SI units. In 1938, it published an international translating vocabulary to unify electrical terminology. This effort continues, and the International Electrotechnical Vocabulary remains an important work in the electrical and electronic industries.

IEC standards are numbered and their titles take a form such as IEC 60411 Graphical Symbols. Standards developed jointly with the ISO use ISO numbering standards and are titled such as ISO/IEC 7498-1:1994 Open Systems Interconnection: Basic Reference Model. The ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (ISO/IEC JTC1) is described in more detail under ISO.

1 Membership

Membership in the IEC is open only to recognized national standards organizations. Member organizations include:

• Canada - Standards Council of Canada
• France - Union Technique de l'Électricité et de la Communication (UTE)
• Germany - Deutsche Kommission Elektrotechnik Elektronik Informationstechnik im DIN & VDE
• JapanJapan (, Nippon/Nihon literally "the origin of the sun") is a country in East Asia situated on a chain of islands east of the Asian continent on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. The largest of these islands are, from north to south, Hokkaido , Honsh - Japanese Industrial Standards Committee
• United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly - British Standards Institute
• United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in - American National Standards InstituteThe American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private, non-profit standards organization that produces industrial standards in the United States. It is a member of ISO and IEC. ANSI's standards fall in many areas. In computing, ANSI standardized t (ANSI)

2 External links:

• IEC Home Page
• the IEV Vocabulary