ISO Organization and international Optical Standards

ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, was established in 1946. Today ISO has 90 members; those are the national standards institutions of the respective countries. The scope of ISO work comprises standardization in all technical fields with the exception of electric and electronic engineering, which is handled by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). ISO's administrative center is the ISO Central Secretariat located in Geneva/Switzerland. The technical work of ISO is allocated to Technical Committees (TC's), each being assigned a particular technical field. Depending on the complexity of the technical field, a TC can divide its tasks and allocate the parts to Sub-Committees (SC's). A SC, in turn, can subdivide its tasks and allocate them to Working Groups (WG's), the WG being the smallest and most specialized unit in the ISO structure. Each of the TC's and SC's has a secretariat which is provided by one of the member organizations of ISO. At present, the technical structure of ISO consists of 164 Technical Committees, 644 Sub-Committees and 1551 Working Groups. The TC of prime interest for the optical community is probably TC 172 "Optics and Optical Instruments", comprising 9 SC's and 17 WG's. The work of TC 172 will be discussed in more detail.