American National Standards Institute

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The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private, non-profit standards organization that serves as a facilitator for the standardization work of its members in the United States. ANSI accredits standards developing organizations (SDOs) that meet a set of requirements and criteria governing the management of consensus standards development. Accredited SDOs can submit candidate documents to ANSI for consideration and approval as American National Standards (ANS). ANSI's goal is to promote and facilitate voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment systems and maintain their integrity. It is the U.S. member body to the ISO and the IEC, via the U.S. National Committee (USNC).

In 1916 the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) invited the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers (AIMME) and the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) to aid them and establish a national body to develop standards and help other standard developing agencies. Two years later, in October 1918, ANSI, originally founded as the American Engineering Standards Committee (AESC), was formed to serve as the national coordinator in the development of standards and as an impartial organization to approve national consensus standards. A year after AESC was founded it approved its first standard on pipe threads. In 1920, they undertook the first major project coordinating national safety codes. The first American Standard Safety Code was approved in 1921 and covered the protection of heads and eyes of industrial workers.

As the organization grew, it became apparent that AESC had outgrown its structure, and in 1928 was reorganized and renamed the American Standards Association (ASA).

In 1946, ASA formed the International Organization for Standardization by joining with standards bodies of 25 other countries. In 1966 it was reorganised as the United States of America Standards Institute. In 1969 it changed its name to American National Standards Institute.

In its first ten years, AESC also approved national standards in the fields of mining, electrical and mechanical engineering, construction and highway traffic.

The ASA photographic exposure system became the basis for the ISO film speed system, currently used worldwide.

In Microsoft Windows, the phrase "ANSI" refers to the Windows ANSI code pages. Most of these are fixed width though there are some variable width ones for ideographic languages. Some of these are very close to the ISO-8859 series leading many to falsely assume that they are identical.

ASCII art which is colorized or animated by way of ANSI terminal control codes (X3.64 sequences) are commonly referred to as "ANSI art" and were predominantly popular on bulletin board systems throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

See also

• ANSI art, art created from a subset of X3.64
• ANSI.SYS, a device driver for MS-DOS
• ANSI escape codes
• Unified Thread Standard
• American National Standards Institute Nanotechnology Panel

External links

• American National Standards Institute official website
• About ANSI Overview, from ANSI web site, as of March 2, 2003; [1]
• ANSI - an Historical Overview, from ANSI web site, as of March 2, 2003; [2]zh-min-nan:ANSI

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