International Organization for Standardization - ISO

Imagine a world in which every country created its own calendar. Like...here we are, chillin’ in the U.S. with our normal 12-month calendar, while in another country, they operate on a five-month calendar...which means March 1st in our country is actually January 60th somewhere else.

Wouldn’t that be absolutely insane and completely chaotic? It sure would, but that’s why we’ve got the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO.

ISO is a nongovernmental group that hangs out in Geneva, Switzerland and creates and publishes international standards for, like, everything. They’re the ones that say we all should use the 12-month Gregorian calendar we know and love, but that’s not all they’re into. Currency codes like USD for the U.S. dollar and JPY for the Japanese yen? ISO came up with those. ISO 9001, one of the world’s preeminent quality management programs? Well, it says it right there in the name: ISO came up with that, too. Food safety, child car seat standards, graphical symbols that we see on road signs, anti-bribery systems…if it’s a thing, chances are good that ISO’s created a standard for it.

So who are these standard-making dudes and dudettes? Well, they’re a bunch of experts in bajillions of fields from over 160 countries around the world. They’ve got nearly 800 various standard subcommittees and have created almost 23,000 different standards since their inception in 1947. They’re a busy group. But we appreciate their efforts, especially when it comes to important and helpful stuff, like knowing what day it is.