World Standards Day

What the day is

World Standards Day is observed on October 14. It marks the date in 1946 when delegates from twenty-five countries met in London and agreed to create an international organization for standardization, which became ISO. The day is kept jointly by ISO, the International Electrotechnical Commission and the International Telecommunication Union.

Origin and background

Standards are the least visible infrastructure there is, and the easiest way to understand them is through failures.

When a large fire broke out in Baltimore in 1904, engine companies came from Washington, Philadelphia and New York to help. A great many of them could not connect to the city's hydrants, because hose couplings were not standardized between cities, and firefighters watched while the fire burned through a substantial part of downtown. National coupling standards followed.

The shipping container is the positive case. Agreeing a small set of container dimensions, corner fittings and lifting points meant that a box could move from truck to train to ship anywhere in the world without being unpacked, and the resulting collapse in freight costs did as much to create modern global trade as any treaty.

Most of daily life rests on similar agreements: screw threads, paper sizes, electrical plugs where they are standardized and the frustration where they are not, date formats, character encodings, shipping pallets, USB, Wi-Fi and the protocols underneath the internet.

Standards are also contested. They are written by committees in which the largest companies are best represented, and whoever's approach becomes the standard gains a durable advantage, which is why format disputes are fought so hard.

How to take part

• Notice one standard you rely on today: the plug, the paper, the cable, the date on a receipt.
• Look up the story of the shipping container if you want a single example that explains the whole idea.
• If you work in a technical field, read the standard rather than the summary of it at least once.
• Write dates as year-month-day at least once today, which is the international standard and sorts correctly.