Description
Book SynopsisThe first global history of voluntary consensus standard setting. Finalist, Hagley Prize in Business History, The Hagley Museum and Library / The Business History ConferencePrivate, 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 desira
Trade ReviewEvery standards professional should own this book. Bottom line—an A+.
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Standards EngineeringBy recounting the story of standardization, Yates and Murphy demonstrate how human and organizational actions slowly sediment into institutions that melt into the background of our lives.
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Administrative Science QuarterlyYates and Murphy provide an engaging narrative about the people and processes responsible for making the technologies we have today work with one another
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New Books NetworkThe book is an extraordinarily detailed history of the movement from national to international standards creation and use. It introduces as its heroes . . . a series of men of rectitude and accomplishment who selflessly built the practice.
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Yale Journal on RegulationA comprehensive, readable account of private standard setting that should interest legal scholars, lawyers, and law students. Yates and Murphy have provided a great service with their illuminating history of the private world of standard setting.
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The Regulatory ReviewThis book is history at its finest. It is not only a technical and business history of engineering standards but also a deeply researched social history of communities of standardizers. It is also elegantly written—a testament to Yates's and Murphy's research and writing skills. Historians of capitalism and technology will find it required reading, but this book also stands a fair chance of engaging a mass readership.
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Business History ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Acronyms
Introduction
Part I. The First Wave
1. Engineering Professionalization and Private Standard Setting for Industry before 1900
2. Organizing Private Standard Setting within and across Borders, 1900 to World War I
3. A Community and a Movement, World War I to the Great Depression
Part II. The Second Wave
4. Decline and Revival of the Movement, the 1930s to the 1950s
5. Standards for a Global Market, the 1960s to the 1980s
6. US Participation in International RFI/EMC Standardization, World War II to the 1980s
Part III. The Third Wave
7. Computer Networking Ushers in a New Era in Standard Setting, 1980s to 2000s
8. Development of the W3C WebCrypto API Standard, 2012 to 2017
9. Voluntary Standards for Quality Management and Social Responsibility since the 1980s
Conclusion
Essay on Primary Sources
Notes
Index
