American History

Opinion

The Joy of Standards

Life is a lot easier when you can plug in to any socket.

By Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel
Dr. Russell and Dr. Vinsel study technology.

Feb. 16, 2019

Our modern existence depends on things we can take for granted. Cars run on gas from any gas station, the plugs for electrical devices fit into any socket, and smartphones connect to anything equipped with Bluetooth. All of these conveniences depend on technical standards, the silent and often forgotten foundations of technological societies.

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The basic irony of standards is the simple fact that there is no standard way to create a standard, nor is there even a standard definition of “standard.” There are, however, longstanding ways that industries and nations coordinate standardization efforts. In the United States, the system of voluntary consensus standards is coordinated by ANSI, the American National Standards Institute.

The standards-development organizations accredited by ANSI follow a bottom-up process. It begins when someone proposes a draft standard, which then goes through a period of public comment. A panel of stakeholders and interested parties then seeks to resolve points of friction. Eventually this process, which often takes years, results in a final published standard.

ANSI was first known as the American Engineering Standards Committee, which was created to address rampant incompatibility throughout American industry. (It was eventually reconstituted in 1966 and took on the name ANSI in 1969.) Its founders came from engineering organizations and departments of the federal government that all published their own standards, which were of limited value because they varied from group to group. The consequences could be catastrophic, as with the 1904 fire that destroyed much of downtown Baltimore: Buildings could have been saved if fire departments from neighboring cities had hoses that fit Baltimore’s fire hydrants.

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Andrew Russell, the dean of arts and sciences at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, and Lee Vinsel, an assistant professor of science and technology studies at Virginia Tech, are working on a book about innovation and maintenance.

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A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 17, 2019, Section SR, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: The Joy of Standards. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe