Graeme Gooday and James Sumner (eds.), By Whose Standards? Standardization, Stability and Uniformity in the History of Information and Electrical Technologies. History of Technology, Volume 28. Series editor Ian Inkster. London: Continuum, 2008. Pp. xiv+171. ISBN 978-0-8264-3875-1. £90.00 (hardback).

Abstract

This volume of the History of Technology series focuses on standardization, a subject of increasing interest across a range of disciplines. Editors Graeme Gooday and James Sumner have selected a diverse set of articles on standardization in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, centring primarily on electrical and information technologies. The chapters dealing with information technologies demonstrate readily recognizable processes of standardization. Some of the chapters on earlier electrical technologies open out the realm of standardization much more broadly, often stretching our conceptions of the process.