Notes on IEC

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The IEC (Internatonal Electrotechnical Commission) was founded in 1906 as a result of a resolution passed at the International Electrical Congress held in St. Louis (U.S.A.) in 1904.

Object

"The object of the Commission is to promote international co-operation on all questions of
standardization and related matters in the fields of electrical and electronic engineering and thus to promote international understanding." (Statutes - Art. 2)

Composition: National Committees

The IEC is composed of National Committees, of which there are 49 at present, representing all theindustrial countries in the world (see map pages 10-11).

Liaisons

The IEC co-operates with numerous other international organizations, particularly with the International Organization (ISO), with which an agreement was passed in 1976, and also with the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), which comprises 18 National Committees, most of which are also members of the IEC.

Publications

To accomplish its task, among other activities the IEC publishes International Standards and TechnicalReports; the International Standards serve as a basis for national standardization and as references when drafting international tenders and contracts. IEC Publications are bilingual in English and French,while the Russian Federation National Committee issues Russian language editions. Among otherimportant IEC Publications figure the International Electrotechnical Vocabulary (IEV) and the IECMultilingual Dictionary of Electricity.

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