Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880

Private,voluntary standards have been critical to the world economy for over a century, shaping everything from screw threads to shipping containers. Engineering Rules, by JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy, traces the evolution of the standard-setting system from its inception in the 1880s to its role in global prosperity and world peace after World War II. Since 1990, a new generation of standardizers has focused on supporting the internet and web while regulating the potential social and environmental harms of the increasingly global economy.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 440 pages
Publication date: 30 March 2021
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

The first comprehensive global history of voluntary consensus standard setting.

Finalist,Hagley Prize in Business History,The Hagley Museum and Library / The Business History Conference

Private,voluntary standards shape almost everything we use,from screw threads to shipping containers to e-readers. They have been critical to every major change in the world economy for more than a century,including the rise of global manufacturing and the ubiquity of the internet.

In Engineering Rules,JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy trace the standard-setting system's evolution through time,revealing a process with an astonishingly pervasive,if rarely noticed,impact on all of our lives.

This type of standard setting was established in the 1880s,when engineers aimed to prove their status as professionals by creating useful standards that would be widely adopted by manufacturers while satisfying corporate customers. Yates and Murphy explain how these engineers' processes provided a timely way to set desirable standards that would have taken much longer to emerge from the market and that governments were rarely willing to set. By the 1920s,the standardizers began to think of themselves as critical to global prosperity and world peace. After World War II,standardizers transcended Cold War divisions to create standards that made the global economy possible. Finally,Yates and Murphy reveal how,since 1990,a new generation of standardizers has focused on supporting the internet and web while applying the same standard-setting process to regulate the potential social and environmental harms of the increasingly global economy.

Drawing on archival materials from three continents,Yates and Murphy describe the positive ideals that sparked the standardization movement,the ways its leaders t.

Weight: 660g
Dimension: 151 x 229 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781421440033