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The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private
non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
that oversees the development of
voluntary consensus standards Standardization or standardisation is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards organizations and governments. Standardization ...
for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organization also coordinates U.S. standards with international standards so that American products can be used worldwide. ANSI accredits standards that are developed by representatives of other
standards organization A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary function is developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpr ...
s,
government agencies A government or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an administratio ...
, consumer groups, companies, and others. These standards ensure that the characteristics and performance of products are consistent, that people use the same definitions and terms, and that products are tested the same way. ANSI also accredits organizations that carry out product or personnel certification in accordance with requirements defined in international standards. The organization's headquarters are in
Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
ANSI's operations office is located in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. The ANSI annual operating budget is funded by the sale of publications, membership dues and fees, accreditation services, fee-based programs, and international standards programs.


History

ANSI was most likely originally formed in 1918, when five engineering societies and three government agencies founded the American Engineering Standards Committee (AESC). In 1928, the AESC became the American Standards Association (ASA). In 1966, the ASA was reorganized and became United States of America Standards Institute (USASI). The present name was adopted in 1969. Prior to 1918, these five founding engineering societies: *
American Institute of Electrical Engineers The American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) was a United States-based organization of electrical engineers that existed from 1884 through 1962. On January 1, 1963, it merged with the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) to form the Instit ...
(AIEE, now
IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
) *
American Society of Mechanical Engineers The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is an American professional association that, in its own words, "promotes the art, science, and practice of multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences around the globe" via "continuing ...
(ASME) *
American Society of Civil Engineers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
(ASCE) * American Institute of Mining Engineers (AIME, now
American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) is a professional association for mining and metallurgy, with over 145,000 members. It was founded in 1871 by 22 mining engineers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Uni ...
) * American Society for Testing and Materials (now
ASTM International ASTM International, formerly known as American Society for Testing and Materials, is an international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, an ...
) had been members of the United Engineering Society (UES). At the behest of the AIEE, they invited the U.S. government Departments of War, Navy (combined in 1947 to become the
Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philippin ...
or DOD) and Commerce to join in founding a national standards organization. According to Adam Stanton, the first permanent secretary and head of staff in 1919, AESC started as an ambitious program and little else. Staff for the first year consisted of one executive, Clifford B. LePage, who was on loan from a founding member, ASME. An annual budget of $7,500 was provided by the founding bodies. In 1931, the organization (renamed ASA in 1928) became affiliated with the U.S. National Committee of the
International Electrotechnical Commission The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
(
IEC The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
), which had been formed in 1904 to develop electrical and electronics standards.


Members

ANSI's members are government agencies, organizations, academic and international bodies, and individuals. In total, the Institute represents the interests of more than 270,000 companies and organizations and 30 million professionals worldwide.


Process

Although ANSI itself does not develop standards, the Institute oversees the development and use of standards by accrediting the procedures of standards developing organizations. ANSI accreditation signifies that the procedures used by standards developing organizations meet the institute's requirements for openness, balance, consensus, and due process. ANSI also designates specific standards as American National Standards, or ANS, when the Institute determines that the standards were developed in an environment that is equitable, accessible and responsive to the requirements of various stakeholders. Voluntary consensus standards quicken the market acceptance of products while making clear how to improve the safety of those products for the protection of consumers. There are approximately 9,500 American National Standards that carry the ANSI designation. The American National Standards process involves: * consensus by a group that is open to representatives from all interested parties * broad-based public review and comment on draft standards * consideration of and response to comments * incorporation of submitted changes that meet the same consensus requirements into a draft standard * availability of an appeal by any participant alleging that these principles were not respected during the standards-development process.


International activities

In addition to facilitating the formation of standards in the United States, ANSI promotes the use of U.S. standards internationally, advocates U.S. policy and technical positions in international and regional standards organizations, and encourages the adoption of international standards as national standards where appropriate. The institute is the official U.S. representative to the two major international standards organizations, the
International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...
(ISO), as a founding member, and the
International Electrotechnical Commission The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
(IEC), via the U.S. National Committee (USNC). ANSI participates in almost the entire technical program of both the ISO and the IEC, and administers many key committees and subgroups. In many instances, U.S. standards are taken forward to ISO and IEC, through ANSI or the USNC, where they are adopted in whole or in part as international standards. Adoption of ISO and IEC standards as American standards increased from 0.2% in 1986 to 15.5% in May 2012.


Standards panels

The Institute administers nine standards panels: * ANSI Homeland Defense and Security Standardization Collaborative (HDSSC) * ANSI Nanotechnology Standards Panel (ANSI-NSP) * ID Theft Prevention and ID Management Standards Panel (IDSP) * ANSI Energy Efficiency Standardization Coordination Collaborative (EESCC) * Nuclear Energy Standards Coordination Collaborative (NESCC) * Electric Vehicles Standards Panel (EVSP) * ANSI-NAM Network on Chemical Regulation * ANSI Biofuels Standards Coordination Panel * Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) Each of the panels works to identify, coordinate, and harmonize voluntary standards relevant to these areas. In 2009, ANSI and the
National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
(NIST) formed the Nuclear Energy Standards Coordination Collaborative (NESCC). NESCC is a joint initiative to identify and respond to the current need for standards in the nuclear industry.


American national standards

* The
ASA ASA as an abbreviation or initialism may refer to: Biology and medicine * Accessible surface area of a biomolecule, accessible to a solvent * Acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin * Advanced surface ablation, refractive eye surgery * Anterior spinal ar ...
(as for American Standards Association) photographic exposure system, originally defined in ASA Z38.2.1 (since 1943) and ASA PH2.5 (since 1954), together with the DIN system (DIN 4512 since 1934), became the basis for the
ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...
system (since 1974), currently used worldwide (
ISO 6 Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A closely related ISO system is used to describe the relationsh ...
,
ISO 2240 Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A closely related ISO system is used to describe the relationsh ...
,
ISO 5800 Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's photosensitivity, sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on #Film, various numerical scales, the most recent being the #ISO, ISO system. A closely related ISO system is us ...
,
ISO 12232 Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A closely related ISO system is used to describe the relations ...
). * A standard for the set of values used to represent characters in digital computers. The ANSI code standard extended the previously created
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
seven bit code standard (ASA X3.4-1963), with additional codes for European alphabets (see also
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC; ) is an eight-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. It descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding six- ...
or EBCDIC). In
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
, the phrase "ANSI" refers to the
Windows ANSI code page Windows code pages are sets of characters or code pages (known as character encodings in other operating systems) used in Microsoft Windows from the 1980s and 1990s. Windows code pages were gradually superseded when Unicode was implemented in Win ...
s (even though they are not ANSI standards). Most of these are fixed width, though some characters for ideographic languages are variable width. Since these characters are based on a draft of the
ISO-8859 ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint ISO and IEC series of standards for 8-bit character encodings. The series of standards consists of numbered parts, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1, ISO/IEC 8859-2, etc. There are 15 parts, excluding the abandoned ISO/IEC 8859-1 ...
series, some of Microsoft's symbols are visually very similar to the ISO symbols, leading many to falsely assume that they are identical. * The first computer
programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...
standard was "American Standard Fortran" (informally known as "FORTRAN 66"), approved in March 1966 and published as ASA X3.9-1966. * The programming language
COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...
had ANSI standards in 1968, 1974, and 1985. The COBOL 2002 standard was issued by
ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...
. * The original standard implementation of the C programming language was standardized as ANSI X3.159-1989, becoming the well-known
ANSI C ANSI C, ISO C, and Standard C are successive standards for the C programming language published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the ...
. * The X3J13 committee was created in 1986 to formalize the ongoing consolidation of
Common Lisp Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S20018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperlinked HTML version, has been derived fro ...
, culminating in 1994 with the publication of ANSI's first object-oriented programming standard. * A popular
Unified Thread Standard The Unified Thread Standard (UTS) defines a standard thread form and series—along with allowances, tolerances, and designations—for screw threads commonly used in the United States and Canada. It is the main standard for bolts, nuts, and a w ...
for nuts and bolts is ANSI/ASME B1.1 which was defined in 1935, 1949, 1989, and 2003. * The ANSI-NSF International standards used for commercial kitchens, such as restaurants, cafeterias, delis, etc. * The ANSI/APSP (Association of Pool & Spa Professionals) standards used for pools, spas, hot tubs, barriers, and suction entrapment avoidance. * The ANSI/HI (Hydraulic Institute) standards used for pumps. * The ANSI for
eye protection Eye protection is protective gear for the eyes, and sometimes face, designed to reduce the risk of injury. Examples of risks requiring eye protection can include: impact from particles or debris, light or radiation, wind blast, heat, sea spray ...
is Z87.1, which gives a specific impact resistance rating to the eyewear. This standard is commonly used for shop glasses, shooting glasses, and many other examples of protective eyewear. * The ANSI paper sizes (ANSI/ASME Y14.1).


Other initiatives

* In 2008, ANSI, in partnership with Citation Technologies, created the first dynamic, online web library for
ISO 14000 ISO 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land); (b ...
standards. * On June 23, 2009, ANSI announced a product and services agreement with Citation Technologies to deliver all ISO Standards on a web-based platform. Through the ANSI-Citation partnership, 17,765 International Standards developed by more than 3,000 ISO technical bodies will be made available on the citation platform, arming subscribers with powerful search tools and collaboration, notification, and change-management functionality. * ANSI, in partnership with Citation Technologies,
AAMI Australian Associated Motor Insurers Limited (commonly referred to as AAMI) is an Australian general insurance provider offering car, home, CTP and business insurance. AAMI has vehicle assessment centres in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland ...
,
ASTM ASTM International, formerly known as American Society for Testing and Materials, is an international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, an ...
, and DIN, created a single, centralized database for medical device standards on September 9, 2009. * In early 2009, ANSI launched a new Certificate Accreditation Program (ANSI-CAP) to provide neutral, third-party attestation that a given certificate program meets the American National Standard ASTM E2659-09. * In 2009, ANSI began accepting applications for certification bodies seeking accreditation according to requirements defined under the Toy Safety Certification Program (TSCP) as the official third-party accreditor of TSCP's product certification bodies. * In 2006, ANSI launche
www.StandardsPortal.org
an online resource for facilitating more open and efficient trade between international markets in the areas of standards, conformity assessment, and technical regulations. The site currently features content for the United States, China, India, Korea, and Brazil, with additional countries and regions planned for future content. * ANSI design standards have also been incorporated into building codes encompassing several specific building sub-sets, such as the ANSI/SPRI ES-1, which pertains to "Wind Design Standard for Edge Systems Used With Low Slope Roofing Systems", for example.


See also

* Accredited Crane Operator Certification *
ANSI ASC X9 __FORCETOC__ The Accredited Standards Committee X9 (ASC X9, Inc.) is an ANSI (American National Standards Institute) accredited standards developing organization, responsible for developing voluntary open consensus standards for the financial ...
*
ANSI ASC X12 The Accredited Standards Committee X12 (also known as ASC X12) is a standards organization. Chartered by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1979, it develops and maintains the X12 Electronic data interchange (EDI) and Context In ...
*
ANSI C ANSI C, ISO C, and Standard C are successive standards for the C programming language published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the ...
*
Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology The Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST) is a non-profit, technical society where professionals who impact controlled environments connect, gain knowledge, receive advice, and work together to create industry best practices. ...
(IEST) *
Institute of Nuclear Materials Management The Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) is an international technical and professional organization that works to promote safe handling of nuclear material and the safe practice of nuclear materials management through publications, a ...
(INMM) *
ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...
(to which ANSI is the official US representative) *
National Information Standards Organization The National Information Standards Organization (NISO; ) is a United States non-profit standards organization that develops, maintains and publishes technical standards related to publishing, bibliographic and library applications. It was found ...
(NISO) *
National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
(NIST) *
Open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definition ...
s


References


External links

* {{Authority control 1918 establishments in the United States 501(c)(3) organizations Charities based in Washington, D.C. ISO member bodies Organizations established in 1918 Technical specifications