As the science of electricity developed in the late 19th century, some saw the need for global standards. In June of 1906 a visionary group of people met in London to create a single international authority for electrotechnical standards.

In the 20th century electricity became vital to industrializing economies and IEC ranks grew as the founding 20 members doubled, then tripled in number. Now we count nearly 160 developed and developing countries.

IEC technical committees take the essentials of any given technology and use them as the basis for creating standards. From a glimmer of an idea to a device that solves a problem is the first part. From there to laying down the concept in its most fundamental terms so that others can repeat the process is the final part, and this is the nature of preparing IEC standards.

Every day by using IEC standards companies create business opportunities, cut down on manufacturing costs and time, optimize testing and enter new markets. Assessing conformity of goods and services to IEC standards helps businesses to guarantee the high quality of their products and helps assure consumers that what they buy is safe to use and performs as expected.

But the IEC’s real impact is that it offers a technological foundation upon which business can innovate. Standards stabilize products and services in the market, giving companies a return on investment. This helps them to grow and go on to develop more products and services. In electrotechnology, where the inventors and engineers have always been intimately involved with the use society puts their creations to, the IEC’s technological expertise is what allows these developments to happen.

Which technologies await us in the future? If you want to know, ask someone who has a lot of future ahead of them because it will be their ideas and their passions that shape it.

The market is a complex interplay of innovation, of business, of buyers and sellers, of makers and consumers. Good ideas succeed in the market and when the market says Go, the IEC moves to standardize them. The ideas that will change our future will come from people whose passion leads them to bring something to this world that wasn’t here before. Some of those ideas will revolutionize our world, some will modify it slightly. All of them will be important somehow.

The IEC also has its place in tomorrow’s world. We may not yet know what that world will look like, but we’ll be there to play our part.

See you in the future.

Vint Cerf, Father of the Internet, talks on electrical energy efficiency.