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1. To eliminate ambiguity from technical languages by
means of standardization of terminology in order to make them
efficient tools of communication.
2. To convince all users of technical languages of the
benefits of standardised terminology.
3. To establish terminology as a discipline for all practical
purposes and to give it the status of a science.
At the opening session of the Infoterm symposium in 1975,
Wüster himself named four scholars as the intellectual fathers of
terminological theory: A. Schloman from Germany, who was the
first to consider the systematic nature of special terms; the Swiss
linguist F. de Saussure, who was the first to draw attention to the
systematic nature of language; E. Dresen, the Russian who was a
pioneer in underscoring the importance of standardization, and,
J. E. Holmstrom, the English scholar who was instrumental in
disseminating terminologies on an international scale from
UNESCO and who was the first to call for an international
organization to deal with the issue.
The work of Eugen Wüster is considered to be the basis for
the beginning of the terminology science. The three classical
schools of terminology, the Austrian (Vienna), the Soviet and the
Czech (Prague) schools, all emerge from this work. His work was
also the base for the so-called General Theory of Terminology,
which was later developed and enhanced by his successors.
During the first half of the 20th century neither linguists nor
social scientists paid special attention to terminology; only from
the 1950s they begin to show any interest and even then it was just
in passing. As Alain Rey says: Only in the twentieth century has
terminology acquired a scientific orientation while at the same
time being recognized as a socially important activity.
Following Pierre Auger in his La terminologie au Quebec et
dans le monde, de la naissance à la maturité' (1988) we identify
four basic periods in the development of modern terminology:
a. the origins (1930±1960)

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