International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard setting body of representatives of national standards bodies, that produces world-wide industrial and commercial standards.
While the ISO defines itself as a non-governmental organization, its ability to set standards which often become law through treaties or national standards makes it more powerful than most NGOs, and in practice it acts as a consortium with strong links to governments. Partipants include one standards body from each member country and major corporations.
ISO cooperates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which is responsible for standardization of electrical equipment.
The organization is usually referred to simply as ISO (pronounced eye-so).
It is a common misconception that ISO stands for International Standards Organization, or something similar. ISO is not an acronym; it comes from the Greek word isos, meaning equal. In English its name is International Organization for Standardization, while in French it is called Organisation Internationale de Normalisation;
to use an acronym would result in different acronyms in English (IOS) and French (OIN), thus the founders of the organization chose ISO as the universal short form of its name.
ISO standards are numbered, and have a format that contains "ISO 99999:yyyy: Title" where "99999" is the standard number, "yyyy" is the year published, and "Title" describes the subject.
Many CD images end in the file extension "ISO" to signify that they are using the ISO 9660 standard filesystem - hence CD images being commonly referred to as "ISOs." Virtually all computers with CD-ROM drives can read CDs that use this standard. DVD-ROMs also use ISO 9660 filesystems.
See also: List of ISO standards, standardization
External links
Referenced By
ANSI | American National Standards Institute | American Standards Association | Bank Identifier Code | C Plus Plus | C Plus Plus programming language | ComputinG | Concert pitch | Cplusplus | Currency code | Currency codes | DSDL | DSSSL | Document Schema Definition Languages | Document Style Semantics and Specification Language | Euro | EuroCurrency | Euro cent | Federal Department of Foreign Affairs | Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (Switzerland) | Fixed exchange rates between the euro and old european currencies | Fixed exchange rates to the euro | Foreign relations of Switzerland | Hanyu Pinyin | History of the Internet | ISO 216 | ISO 3166-1 | ISO 3166-1:DD | ISO 4217 | ISO 5218 | ISO 9362 | ISO 9660 | ISO country code | ISO currency code | International Electrotechnical Commission | International relations of Switzerland | International standard | Internet/History | IsoImage | List of currency codes | List of initialisms | Macedonia/Government | NSAP | NSAP address | Non-government organisation | Non-government organization | Non-governmental organization | Non-governmental organizations | Nongovernmental organization | ODIF | Open Document Interchange Format | P programming language | PinYin | Pitch (music) | Political Department (Switzerland) | Politics of Macedonia | Politics of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia | Politics of the Republic of Macedonia | Portable Network Graphics | Quality Management System | QuickTime | QuickTime 6 | QuickTime Player | RELAX | RELAX NG | Regular Language description for XML | Schematron | Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs | Switzerland/Transnational issues | The Euro | USASI | United States of America Standards Institute | Universal Design | Universal Esperanto Association | Universala Esperanto-Asocio | World Esperanto Association
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