Technical standard

A standard is a comparatively uniform or unified, widely accepted and usually applied (or at least aspired to) way of describing, producing or performing something that has prevailed over other ways or is at least considered a guide. In this sense, the term standard is particularly common in the fields of technology and methodology, in human rights, living standards or environmental protection. The term is used both for generally accepted objectives and for generally accepted realisations.

A standard can

• be described in a formalised or non-formalised set of rules (in one or more rules or a standard), or
• come up unplanned.

In (production) technology, the manufacturer-specific standard and the open standard are found alongside the industrial standard.

Interested parties may take action to promote one standard or push back another standard. Such disputes are called format wars. The first major format war in industrial history was the war of currents, when around 1890 Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) and George Westinghouse (1846-1914) argued over whether the DC voltage favoured by Edison or the AC voltage favoured by Westinghouse was the more suitable technology for the large-scale supply of electrical energy to the United States of America. Ultimately, the companies fought over market share.

Meaning

In English, standard in its present meaning was originally used only in the form of the king's standard. Standards set in the name or mark (the standard) of the king were considered authoritative. A standard is thus a kind of rallying point around which one gathers - similar to the standard ("a field sign hoisted on a pole, usually a plastic image, which marked the rallying point of a unit in battle and thus became the insignia of that unit").

Standard is commonly known as a rule or norm. However, there are also clear definitions, for example from British Standards (formerly "British Standards Institute"): "A standard is a publicly available technical document developed with the participation and agreement of all interested parties. The standard is based on results from science and technology and aims to promote the common good."

Standard and norm

In the field of technology and natural sciences, the term standard is generally used as a generic term for

• technical standards (in the sense of agreements between certain organisations) which have gained wide acceptance in practice,
• social and political norms, which are prescribed by laws and regulations and which are
• Unifications that have developed unplanned as a result of social processes and practical experience and have established themselves as a kind of tacit agreement ("convention"), for example industry standards and "manufacturer-specific (proprietary) standards".

One speaks of de facto or quasi-standards when methods or rules become established in practice and are not set as a result of agreements, laws, regulations or similar.

In German usage, a confusion of terms has occurred in recent years, in that "standard" is also used for norms in analogy to the English term standard. For the distinction between the terms "norm" and "standard" in traditional German usage, see under standardization. A standard is a generally valid and published rule for the regulation of an issue that is widely recognized in fact (sometimes also in law) and adopted through a standardization procedure. It has passed through all the stages of a standardisation procedure, and has then been adopted and published. The prerequisite for a standard is that it is technically mature and has a benefit for the user. The term de jure standard comes from English usage (whereby the English spelling dispenses with the hyphens), which coincides with the German term Norm.