ABSTRACT
There are some 70 international standards organizations. There are three apex international standards bodies: the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The apex bodies do cooperate very closely in order to prevent significant overlap of their issued standards, and their policies tend to align even though they deal with disparate technical fields from somewhat different perspectives (private versus public). The ISO focuses on mechanical and related subjects while the IEC covers electrical and electronics subjects. Selected examples of important but much more specialized international standards bodies of interest to engineers. The Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) is part of the United Nations' outreach program implemented by the ITU. IEEE is the largest engineering society in the world and can also be considered an International Standards Organization (it was once the US National Committee of the IEC).
