International Electrotechnical Commission

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The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is an international standards organization dealing with electrical, electronic and related technologies. Some of its standards are developed jointly with ISO.

The IEC held its inaugural meeting on 26th June 1906, following discussions between the British IEE, the American IEEE (then called IEE), and others, which began at the 1900 Paris International Electrical Congress, and continued with Colonel R. E. B. Crompton playing a key role. It currently counts more than 130 countries. Sixty-five of these are members, while another 69 participate in the Affiliate Country Programme, which is not a form of membership but is designed to help industrializing countries get involved with the IEC. Originally located in London, the commission moved to its current headquarters in Geneva in 1948.

The IEC charter embraces all electrotechnologies including energy production and distribution, electronics, magnetics and electromagnetics, electroacoustics, multimedia and telecommunication, as well as associated general disciplines such as terminology and symbols, electromagnetic compatibility, measurement and performance, dependability, design and development, safety and the environment.

Today, the IEC tends to be the prime reference point for many standards which were originally drawn up by national standards bodies such as the BSI, with those bodies now copying the IEC version into their current publications. For example, IEC 268-10 (1978) is commonly quoted as the standard defining 'Programme Level Meters', though the content is essentially the same as was defined in British Standard BS4297-1968, which in turn came out of work done at the BBC Research Department.

The IEC was instrumental in developing and distributing standards for units of measurement, particularly the gauss, hertz, and weber. They also first proposed a system of standards, the Giorgi System, which ultimately became the SI, or Système International d’unités (in English, the International System of Units).

In 1938, it published a multilingual international vocabulary to unify electrical terminology. This effort continues, and the International Electrotechnical Vocabulary remains an important work in the electrical and electronic industries.

IEC standards have numbers in the range 60000–79999 and their titles take a form such as IEC 60417: Graphical Symbols for use on Equipment. The numbers of older IEC standards were converted in 1997 by adding 60000, for example IEC 27 became IEC 60027.

Standards developed jointly with ISO use ISO numbering standards and are titled such as ISO/IEC 7498-1:1994 Open Systems Interconnection: Basic Reference Model. The use of the ISO/IEC prefix is limited to publications from ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 on Information Technology, as well as some ISO/IEC guides. ISO/IEC JTC1 is described in more detail under ISO.

The CISPR (Comité International Spécial des Perturbations Radioélectriques) – in English, the International Special Committee on Radio Interference – is one of the groups founded by the IEC.

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Membership

The IEC is made up of members, called national committees, and each NC represents its nation's electrotechnical interests in the IEC. This includes manufacturers, providers, distributors and vendors, consumers and users, all levels of governmental agencies, professional societies and trade associations as well as standards developers from national standards bodies. National committees are constituted in different ways. Some NCs are public sector only, some are a combination of public and private sector, and some are private sector only. About 90% of those who prepare IEC standards work in industry.

Member organizations include: