Gone are the days when a local blacksmith made you a kettle. Today we buy a product made on the other side of the world and assume that we can plug it into a standard UK socket in our own home without even reading the instructions. And we demand much of our new appliance. It must work when we plug it in but it should also be easy to use; its manufacture should not have damaged the environment or broken any laws; it should have labels and instructions and packaging to protect it; and of course, it should be safe. And most of these expectations are managed by the use of standards.

Possibly the first technical standard was developed around 5,000 years ago when the Sumerians adopted a calendar which divided the year into 30-day months. Later the Babylonians added the concept of the seventh day being a holy day and the week was born. Then the Egyptians decided that a year should last 365 days (with occasional adjustments to compensate for the fact that the earth actually takes longer than that to go round the sun). The modern standard calendar is based on a European design from 1582 which incorporated all these ideas and was subsequently accepted round the world.

These days we can develop multinational standards rather more quickly. AMDEA’s main involvement is with the performance and safety of our members’ products. However in today’s global market place more and more products are expected to meet the same safety and performance standards whether they come from Birmingham, Barcelona or Beijing.

British standards

The first national standards body in the UK was the Engineering Standards Committee, founded in 1901 to standardise iron and steel sections for bridges, railways and shipping.

Four years later the British Electrotechnical Committee (BEC) was established and they were a founder member of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). In 1929, BEC became the British Engineering Standards Association and subsequently the British Standards Institution (BSI). Today, BSI has over 27,000 current standards and produces 1,700 new or revised standards each year, with the help of 6,000 people from 1,800 organisations (including AMDEA).

European standards

European Standards (EN) are documents that have been ratified by one of the three European Standards Organisations – CEN (the European Committee for Standardization), CENELEC (the European Committee for ElectroTechnical Standardization) and ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute). CEN members are the national standards organisations of the countries in the European Union plus those of the European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland).

CENELEC was created in 1973 from the merger of two existing European organisations. It comprises the National Electrotechnical Committees of 31 European countries plus affiliate members from 11 neighbouring countries. AMDEA staff (nominated by BSI) sit on CENELEC committees dealing with performance, safety and environmental standards.

ETSI produces global standards for Information and Communications Technologies and has more than 700 member organisations in 62 countries.

International standards

The IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) first met in 1906. Its members are national committees representing their country’s interests – as well as full members there are associate members with limited voting rights.

In 1996, the IEC and CENELEC signed an agreement to plan some work in common. So now, if the results of parallel voting are positive in both the IEC and CENELEC, the IEC publishes the international standard and CENELEC ratifies the European one.

The International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations was founded in New York in 1926. In 1944, the United Nations Standards Coordinating Committee was established. Two years later at a meeting in London representatives of 25 countries agreed to supersede these with an International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) "to facilitate the international coordination and unification of industrial standards". ISO is now an association of national standards bodies from 163 countries with its base in Geneva.

ISO standards are developed by technical committees of experts who may be joined by representatives of government agencies, testing laboratories, consumer associations, non-governmental organisations and academics. As a member of ISO and IEC, BSI can adopt any international standard as a British Standard but does not have to do so. Some standards are developed jointly. However, as a member of CEN and CENELEC, BSI is obliged to adopt all European Standards and to withdraw any national standards that might conflict with them.

AMDEA chairs several BSI Committees and attends many others. We also participate in various IEC committees, again in the areas of performance, safety and environmental standards.

So next time you make a cup of tea, spare a thought for all the work that goes into ensuring that you can just switch on a kettle, safely.