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“Internationale Sprachnormung in der Technik” [International
standardization of technical language] (Wüster 1931) – established
in 1936 the Technical Committee ISA/TC 37 “Terminology” for
the sake of formulating general principles and rules for
terminology standardization. This was the direct predecessor of the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The ISO was
created in 1946 to replace the ISA, which had ceased operations
due to World War II. The purpose of the new body, headquartered
in Geneva, is to facilitate international coordination and
unification of industrial standards, as stated in the original by-laws,
which were signed by the first 25 member nations. Today the ISO
has some 170 national committees one committee per country
which act as full members or corresponding members. The ISO's
range of activities is clearly differentiated from that of the IEC.
The ISO is responsible for all technical specializations except
electrical engineering and electronics, which are the exclusive
domain of the IEC. An agreement between the two bodies
establishes the respective domains of each body and the
distribution that has been set in all fields of standardization on the
international level. The first international committee on
terminological standardization was created at the ISA in 1936 by
request of the Soviet Union, which had adopted the proposals
made in Wuster's work. This committee (ISA 37) operated in four
fields from 1936 to 1939, namely rules for naming concepts, the
international unification of terms, monolingual and multilingual
vocabularies. World War II also ended the ISA's terminological
activities, which were not taken up again until the founding of the
ISO in 1946. Wuster took charge of the secretariat of the new
standing committee `37`Terminology'' in 1952, as between 1947
and 1949 the committee had been inactive. The committee began
to operate within the Austrian Standardization Institute
(Österreichisches Normungsinstitut). What was formerly
committee 37 ``Terminology'' became Technical Committee 37
``Terminology (Principles and Coordination).'' It was thus clearly

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