ORGANIZATIONS FOR STANDARDIZATION OF QUANTITIES AND UNITS

Many international organizations have contributed to the development o f the International System of Units (SI). The highest international au thority on units is the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CG PM), which is an intergovernmental body. Legal aspects of units and me trology are dealt with by the International Organization of Legal Metr ology (OIML), whereas scientific questions in this field are dealt wit h by scientific unions such as the International Union of Pure and App lied Physics (IUPAP), and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). Among their many tasks the international standards organizations, i.e. the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), imple ment the SI as adopted by the CGPM. They also standardize quantities, i.e. their definitions, names, and letter symbols. The main purpose of this article is to present these two organizations for standardizatio n and to describe their role in the standardization of quantities and units.