ISO, IEC, ITU: who writes the world’s technical standards?
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In a nutshell
A technical standard is a shared agreement on how something is made, measured or connected. Without it, a product from one country would not fit or talk to a product from another.
Three of the organisations that write such agreements are based in Geneva: ISO, the International Organization for Standardization; IEC, the International Electrotechnical Commission; and ITU, the International Telecommunication Union.
2ITU, the oldest: 1865
The oldest of the three began with the telegraph. On 17 May 1865 twenty countries signed the first International Telegraph Convention in Paris and created the International Telegraph Union. The date is still marked every year as World Telecommunication and Information Society Day.
The union’s bureau was set up in Berne in 1868. In 1948 the headquarters moved to Geneva. Today ITU describes itself as the United Nations agency for digital technologies. Its members are states, joined by companies, universities and other organisations as Sector Members, Associates and Academia members.
3IEC: electricity, from 1906
The International Electrotechnical Commission was founded in London on 27 June 1906. Its first president was the physicist Lord Kelvin. Its field is in its name: electrical and electronic technology.
Some of the IEC’s early work is part of physics today. In the 1930s it gave names to units such as the hertz and the weber, and helped turn the practical electrical units into a complete system that became the International System of Units. In 1948 its central office moved to Geneva.
4ISO: from 1947
The International Organization for Standardization grew out of a conference in London in October 1946, where delegates of 25 countries agreed to create it. ISO began work on 23 February 1947 with its headquarters in Geneva.
ISO’s members are national standards bodies, one per country. In 1948 the IEC moved into the same villa in Geneva, and the two organisations have worked side by side ever since.
5Why Geneva?
Two of the three arrived in the same year, 1948, and the third was born there a year earlier. The moves fitted Geneva’s long role as a host of international organisations, described in the Diplomacy section.
6Standards and units
Standards say how to make and connect things; units say how to measure them. The two worlds meet constantly: a standard for a cable gives its values in SI units. The units themselves are looked after by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres, explained on our sister site Sevres.science.
Sources
- ITU, The 1865 International Telegraph Conference, checked 29 October 2026
- ITU, Overview of ITU’s history, checked 29 October 2026
- ITU, Membership: frequently asked questions, checked 29 October 2026
- IEC, How and why the IEC was started, checked 29 October 2026
- Swiss Association for Standardization (SNV), 100 years of SNV: the decade 1940–1950, checked 29 October 2026
- Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the UN Office at Geneva, Facts and figures about International Geneva, checked 29 October 2026