STANDARDIZATION AND THE UNITED STATES
STANDARDIZATION AND THE UNITED STATES
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Date
1959
Authors
Moench, John Otto Dax
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Abstract
For the past decade and more, the United States, through its
military departments, other agencies of government, and private
organizations, has placed a considerable investment in national and
international standardization. A significant portion of this effort has
gone into national standardization, but, with the increasing recognition
of the principle of mutual defense and economic interdependence, an
ever-increasing portion of the effort has been expended to achieve
international standardization. However, in spite of good intentions
and the application of considerable resources to achieve standardization,
the results have been limited and the program, itself, has been
marked with frustration, conflict, uncertainty, ignorance, open disagreement, and confusion. This is not directly a criticism of the
personnel, agencies, and organizations participating in the program- -
it is more a reflection of the conditions and circumstances encountered
in society and in the processes of standardization.
For four years (1954- 1958) the author of this thesis was in
charge of the United States Air Force international standardization
effort. During that period, he became uniquely concerned with many
aspects of the United States national and international standardization
programs. In consideration of this experience, while the author
attended the Air War College of the United States Air Force (1958- 1959) he was given authority to conduct an extensive research of the problem
of standardization. Based on this research and his personal experiences,
the author then prepared for the United States government a lengthy
history of the problem of standardization in the United States together
with a discussion of the current national and international policy, organizational,
and other problems. Due to the sources of much of the information
used by the author in this governmental report and the nature of
some of the conclusions, the document cannot be made public. However ,
since there is an almost complete lack of writings in the United States
on this most vital national and international subject, the author considered
it worthwhile to devote this thesis to discus sing those general
portions of the problem that were not of a sensitive nature.
In the bibliography appended to this thesis, the author has indicated
the full range of the more important documents and information
sources to which he has had access. It is not thereby implied that all
the cited sources have been used directly in this thesis, but the listing
will serve to give the reader a feel for the base upon which the author
has built this thesis.