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Introduction: Standards and the Global Economy

Standards for measurement, for compatibility, for performance, and for other characteristics of products are ubiquitous. They have been central to businesses in all the lead industries since the Industrial Revolution, including today’s global manufacturing firms, which depend on intricate supply chains based on standard shipping containers, and businesses that are based on the Internet and the World Wide Web, which rely on thousands of computer and telecommunication standards. Standards have also helped transform, and oftenmarkedly improve, the lives of average citizens in industrialized countries: water and sewer systems, electric lights and phones, and every modern home entertainment system would have been inconceivable without the modern standard-setting system. Yet, standards and standard setting are not widely studied by historians of the global economy, including business historians. Only a few business historians have focused on the complex, hybrid system of public and private organizations that creates standards, either broadly or in specific technical domains.1 The articles included in this special issue demonstrate both the relevance of standard setting to business