International Electrotechnical Commission

Jonathan Buck

I. Introduction

Th e International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is the leading global organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all elec- trical, electronic, and related technologies. Th ese serve as a basis for national standardization and as references when draft ing international tenders and contracts. Th rough its members, known as National Committees, the IEC promotes international cooperation on all questions of electrotechnical standardization and related matters, such as the assessment of conformity to standards, in the fi elds of electricity, electronics, and related technologies. Th e IEC charter embraces all electrotechnologies including electronics, magnetics and electromagnetics, electroacoustics, multimedia, telecommuni- cation, and energy production and distribution, as well as associated general disciplines such as terminology and symbols, electromagnetic compatibil- ity, measurement and performance, dependability, design and development, safety, and the environment.

II. Origins and Development

Th e origins of the IEC can be traced back to the late 19th century when sci- entists from diff erent countries found themselves using diff erent terms for the same electrical phenomena: they recognized the need for a single set of technical terms and their defi nitions for the emerging science of electricity. Th us, on 15 September 1904, delegates to the International Electrical Con- gress, held in St. Louis in the United States, adopted a report that included the following: . . . steps should be taken to secure the co-operation of the technical societies of the world, by the appointment of a representative Commission to consider the question of the standardization of the nomenclature and ratings of electrical apparatus and machinery. 574 Jonathan Buck

As a result, the IEC was offi cially founded in June 1906, in London, England, where its Central Offi ce was established. By 1914 the IEC had formed four technical committees to deal with Nomenclature, Symbols, Rating of Electri- cal Machinery, and Prime Movers. Th e Commission had also issued a first list of terms and defi nitions covering electrical machinery and apparatus, a list of international letter symbols for quantities and signs for names of units, an international standard for resistance for copper, a list of defi nitions in connection with hydraulic turbines, and a number of defi nitions and recom- mendations relating to rotating machines and transformers. Th e First World War interrupted IEC work, which resumed in 1919 and by 1923 the number of technical committees had increased to ten. In 1930 the IEC established the following electrical units: – Hertz for frequency; – Oersted for magnetic fi eld strength; – Gauss for magnetic fl ux density; – Maxwell for magnetic fl ux; – Gilbert for magnetomotive force; – Var for reactive power; and – Weber as the practical unit of magnetic fl ux. It was decided to extend the existing series of practical units into a compre- hensive system of physical units, which became the “Giorgi system”, named aft er Giovanni Giorgi (1871–1950) – an Italian scientist and engineer. Th is system has been elaborated further and is now commonly known as the ‘Sys- tème International’, or SI for short. Between the First and the Second World Wars, a number of new inter- national organizations came into being and the IEC recognized the need for co-operation to avoid overlapping eff orts. In 1938, the IEC produced the fi rst edition of the International Electro- technical Vocabulary (IEV). Th e unifi cation of electrotechnical terminology was one of the principal tasks allocated to the IEC by the St. Louis Con- gress. In the early days, the Nomenclature Committee was engaged in pio- neer work, as no comparable international technical vocabulary had yet been published and few national electrotechnical vocabularies existed. With its 2,000 terms in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, and Esperanto, and its defi nitions in French and English, the IEV could rightly be considered as an outstanding achievement. It aroused wide interest among international technical organizations outside the electrotechnical fi eld. In September 1939 the IEC’s activity came to a standstill because of the Second World War and did not resume for another six years. In 1948 the IEC Central Offi ce moved from London to Geneva, Switzer- land.