[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“Until recently I didn’t think much about International
Standards Organization (ISO) standards. I guess most people are the
same. ISO standards cover a range of different things such as pipe
threads (ISO standard number 7) to shoe sizes (ISO 9407) to
photographic film speeds (ISO 5800). Although they’re invisible to
the lay person, much of modern life is made easier by their
international adoption; think how difficult it would be to buy
shoes from China without standard sizes, for example.“In the computing world, ISO standards have a mixed record. Back
in the early days of computer networking, starting around 1977, ISO
developed a networking protocol standard which ended up being
completely sidelined when it ran into the working TCP/IP protocol
standard that became the Internet…”