NIST Standards Education
Introduction to Standards
Michael B. Spring
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
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Overview
• What are standards
• Definitions
• Rise of modern standards
• Fire prevention
• Boilers and boiler explosions
• Commerce and the Railroads
• Thinking about standards
• The beginnings of voluntary consensus standards
• Internationally
• Nationally
• Looking around at standards
• Areas of IT standardization
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Some History
• Most of us don’t think very much about standards, and if
we do it is mostly about units of measure – a foot or a
meter, a quart or a liter – and indeed these are some of
the earliest standards set by government decree
• However, consider:
• A standard for value – money – greatly facilitated the
exchange of goods. The “Lydian stater” or trite may well
have been the first – from about 600BC.
• Also, the alphabet was an early standard for the
exchange of information.
• There are a number of views and definitions of standards
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Standards in Law
• Magna Carta(1215) specifies:
• There is to be one measure of wine and ale and corn
within the realm, namely the London quarter, na done
breadth of cloth, and it is to be the same with
weights.(clause 35)
• US Constitution, in section 8:
• The Congress shall have power...to coin money, regulate
the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the
standard of weights and measures.
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Three Definitions of Standards
• The first definition is from the 1979 National Policy on
Standards for the United States.
• The second is based on a technical view from the
American National Standard Institute (ANSI).
• The third is a common view from the information
technology industry.
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What Are Standards
• A standard is a prescribed set of rules, conditions, or
requirements concerning definition of terms;
classification of components; specification of materials,
performance, or operations; delineation of procedures;
or measurement of quantity and quality in describing
materials, products, systems, services, or
practices[Committee, 1979 #5]
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What Are Standards
• a technical specification or other document, available
to the public, drawn up with the cooperation and
consensus or general approval of all the interests
affected by it, based on the consolidated results of
science, technology, and experience, aimed at the
promotion of optimum community benefits, and
approved by a body recognized in the national,
regional, or international level. (Kemmler)
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What Are Standards
• A standard, of any form or type, represents a statement
by its authors, who believe that their work will be
understood, accepted, and implemented by the
market. This belief is tempered by the understanding
that the market will act in its own best interests, even if
these do not coincide with the standard. A standard is
also one of the agents used by the standardization
process to bring about market change. (Cargill, 1989, pp
41-42)
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Key Events – 1904 Baltimore Fire
• 1904 Baltimore fire caused an
interest in standard fire equipment.
As a result of incompatible hoses,
Baltimore burned down.
• Although the National Board of Fire
Underwriters had been stressing the
need to standardize since 1872, there
were more than 600 different sizes
and variations of fire hose couplings
still being used in the United States.
• Originally established by Congress in
1824 to establish uniform weights and
measures, it was renamed the
National Bureau of Standards in 1901
and charged more broadly. The
Engineering Laboratory included
research on building material and fire
laboratory.
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Key Events – Boiler Explosions
• With the industrial revolutions ,
there was a corresponding
grown in Boiler explosions
• The Grover Shoe Factory in
Brocton Mass injured 150 and
claimed 58 lives
• The American Society of
Mechanical Engineers
undertook the development of
standards for Pressure Vessels in
the early 1900’s
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Key Event – The Rise of Railroads
• Historically, time was a local matter. Each city used some
form of local solar time, maintained by a well-known clock.
• Standard time zones were instituted North America by the
railroads on November 18, 1883 and adopted by Congress
in 1918
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Thinking about standards
• Over the last 50 years, academics and the standards
community have tried to come to better understand
standards and the standards process
• What kinds of standards are there?
• How are the best standards produced?
• How are standards used – what the goal
• While a lot of standards research is focused on the
economics of standards, there is also a growing body of
research on the process of creating good standards
• The various uses of standards make it increasingly
important for industries and nations to understand the
use of standards
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Theory of Standards
• Theory should predict what will happen.
• Do we have a theory of standards that explains:
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Why VHS beat out beta
The success of the internet over OSI
The rise of DOS as a standard
The failure of Unix as a standard
• Is there a theories about standards might be:
• Standards reduces uncertainty -- thus an important aspect
of economic policy
• Standards are by definition public goods and therefore
outside the scope of intellectual property protections
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The Economists View of Standards
• Economists see costs and benefits of "natural selection"
in standards evolution
• Benefits
• the market is smart, will converge on the right choice
• errors are worked out during the process
• Costs
• the market is slow
• lots of effort wasted and not used
• some people choose the wrong technology and get
stranded
• While the market is by definition correct, it is not always
the best solution chosen by the market
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The Economists View of Standards
• Several economists have examined the standardization
process (Farrell and Saloner, Besen, David). They
address a number of different issues:
• bandwagon effect -- once someone starts, everyone
follows
• horses, lemmings, and penguins -- different impacts of
standards actions
• stranding -- one of the possible problems in early adoption
• lock-in -- one of the consequences of standardization
• free-rideship -- the unequal burden of standardization
• predatory standardization
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Ways of Classing Standards
• risk reduction and safety
• measurement
• ease of use, convenience
• integration of technological improvement
• Interchangeability
• interoperability
• Interconnectability
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Taxonomies
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• David (General Taxonomy)
Technical
Behavioral
Measurement
meter, volt
professional licensing
Minimum
Attribute
steam pressure,
steel strength
job qualifications
Compatibility
USB
contracts
• Farrell and Saloner (types of Compatibility Standards)
• physical compatibility
• communications compatibility
• compatibility by convention
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Other Ways of Classing Standards
• By the scope of the standard
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Company standard
Industry or enterprise standard
National standard
Global standard
• By where the standard comes from
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De facto
De jure
Public Specification
Consensus voluntary
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Where do Standards Come From?
• We will be focusing on one particular kind of standard – called
“voluntary consensus”, but standards have many origins.
• Your computer keyboard was designed to prevent the
hammers of early typewriters from jamming – it became a
standard because a lot of people decided to use it – a “de
facto standard”
• Some standards come from government – the law. They are
“de jure standards”
• Some standards are accepted by the industry based on the
dominance of a privately owned standard – Microsoft’s
format for “Word” has been adopted my many -- a public
specification
• Yet other standards come from agreements reached by all
the involved parties – “voluntary consensus”
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How do we use standards?
• Classic standards – weights and measures – enable
commerce. Indeed, weights and measures were often within
the jurisdiction of the treasury function in government
• Modern standards also enable commerce, but beyond that
they may promote safety, interoperability, etc.
• Standards can be used to create or restrict markets – indeed
in recent years, corporate interests as well as engineering
concerns have played a role
• With the rise of free trade, standards can be used as a tool to
restrict trade
• Most recently, some have begun to focus on standards as
enablers of innovations
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Funding Standardization
• Some people are now positing that the era of standards
is over and that one of two policies will come to
dominate:
• the provision of cheap ubiquitous computing -- read that
Microsoft -- just leave it to them
• the evolution of public specification by companies with
dominant products -- e.g. HPGL and Postscript
• As we move to international standards and a small
company economy, where do you see the money or
mechanisms for funding standards coming from?
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International Bodies
• 1865 The International Telegraph Union is created in Paris.
• Leads to the International Telecommunications Union in 1934.
• The ITU has among its organizational units:
• The International Frequency Registration Board(IFRB)
• The International Radio Consultative Committee(
• 1957, the CCITT, the International Telegraph and Telephone
Consultative Committee
• International Telecommunications Union became a specialized
agency of the UN.
• 1904 The electromechnical congress, held in the US, resulted in
the formation of the International Electromechanical
Commission, IEC.(1906)
• International Standards Organization
• ISO TC 97 formed in response to ANSI X3 formation
• ISO Technical Committee 97, IEC Technical Committees 47B and 83
were merged to form ISO/IEC JTC 1.
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Nationally – Government
• In 1824, Congress formed the Office of Standard Weights and Measures in
the Treasury Department
• In 1894, consistent with what was going on internationally, it was charged
with coming to grips with measurements related to electricity
• 1901 responsibility was moved to commerce and the name was
changed to the National Bureau of Standards
• Finally, in 1988, the name was changed again to its current name –the
National Institute for Standards and Technology. It’s organizational
structure changes over time, with laboratories in the areas of
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Engineering
Physical Measurement
Information Technology
Material Measurement
Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology
NIST Center for Neutron Research
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Nationally – Private Sector
• Commerce, the growth of the railroads, both for the railroad and
for the products thus distributed, the development of mass
production, national distribution (Sears), and the growth of
influence of the technologist, all increased the desire for
standardization
• In 1880, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers was
formed. In the early 1900’s it played a critical role in the
development of Boiler and Pressure Vessel code.
• In 1898, The American Society for Testing Materials, later renamed
the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). ASTM is
the largest non-government standards developer with more than
6500 standards. One of their initial foci was standards for steel
that supported the growth of the railroads
• In 1918, The American Engineering Standards Committee is
founded. The AESC is the forerunner of the American National
Standards Institute (ANSI), the umbrella organization for
standards setting organizations.
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Areas of IT standardization
• Communication Standards
• Networking standards
• Network infrastructure
• Data Standards
• Native formats
• Encryption standard
• Software Standards -- OS, API
• Languages
• OS API’s
• Human-computer Interaction Standards
• Icons and functionality
• Transactions and Dialogs
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Standards are Critical
• Think about daily life:
• Imagine trying to build a house without standard lumber
sizes, door sizes, window sizes, plumbing supplies, electrical
wire and outlets, etc.
• Imagine cars and driving without standard road signs, and
traffic signals, driving rules, tire sizes, gasoline grades, etc.
• Imagine computers without standards for interfaces, code
sets, document formats, communications protocols would
not work.
• How good are you at spotting standards
• Name the standards in force in this room
• Name the standards that impact a computer session
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Commonly Encountered Standards
• Today
• Alphabet
• Books
• Size
• Spine
• ISBN
• Stairs – slope and size
• Roads
• Signs
• Grades
• Bridge heights
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• On any given day
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Screw threads
Motor oil
Medical supplies
Meat grades
Weights and measures
Photo sizes
Film grades
Image formats
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Standards in the room
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Plugs
Window sizes
Glass strength
Light bulbs
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Door size
Table height
Carpet grades
Paint composition
• Wattage and voltage
• size
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Standards in a Computer Session
• Keyboard – QWERTY
• Code Sets
• ASCII (X3.4)
• Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646)
• Ports:
• USB
• Firewire (IEEE 1394)
• Networks
• Ethernet (IEEE 802.3)
• Wireless (IEEE 802.11b)
• Protocols
• http (HyperText Transfer Protocol) Web
• smtp (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) Email
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