Celebrating 120 years of the International Electrotechnical Commission, part 1: the IEC's history

The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) was founded on June 26th, 1906. For the organization’s 120th anniversary in June 2026, we look back at the early days, major milestones, technical breakthroughs, and the most significant international standards for industrial safety.

This article is the first in a 3-part series:

• Part 1: a look back at the IEC’s history and developments

• Part 2: IEC standards that changed industrial safety for the better

• Part 3: IDEC’s contributions to international standardization and industrial safety

As the IEC’s own history recalls, in the 1880s the world of electrical science started to change.

Global scientists knew that using their own measurements and terminology – rather than shared language – was slowing shared progress in their field. There were more than 10 different units of electromotive force, current, and resistance in use worldwide at that time.

The scientific community moved quickly, meeting at the first International Electrical Congress (Paris, 1881), to discuss units of measurement. They decided on shared names and measurements for many of the units we use today, including the ohm, the volt, and the ampere.

Those initial talks didn’t solve everything. At the International Electrical Congress held in America 23 years later (St. Louis, Missouri, 1904), the Palace of Electricity exhibits used different currents, voltages, frequencies, connectors, and plug sockets.

According to the IEC and other sources, St. Louis was where talks to establish the commission began. The Congress suggested that a permanent international body should work to standardize various electrical terms and measurements.

The IEC was formally founded in London, at an initial meeting attended by participants from 16 countries.

The common process for making, reviewing and revising international safety standards is via committees of experts. Members are selected from the IEC’s national committees, to be sure that different countries and points of view are represented. There were over 90 national committees at the time of writing.

Committees act as neutral, independent platforms for experts to discuss specific issues and agree on solutions. Each international standard the IEC publishes is the consensus-based result of those discussions:

"A normative document, developed according to consensus procedures, which has been approved by the IEC National Committee members of the responsible committee in accordance with Part 1 of the ISO/IEC Directives."

Within the first 8 years the IEC established 4 advisory committees, for:

• Nomenclature

• Symbols

• Rating of electrical machinery

• Prime movers

Advisory committees were eventually renamed as ‘technical committees’. The total number of committees grew to 10 in 1923, to 34 in 1948, and to 80 by 1980.

Including sub-committees and joint ISO/IEC committees, as of early 2026 there were roughly 230 IEC technical committees with close to 11,000 members.

Industrial safety-related areas covered by IEC committees include:

• Safety of machinery – Electrotechnical aspects

• Low-voltage switchgear and controlgear

• Equipment for explosive atmospheres

• Industrial-process measurement, control and automation

• Information technology

• Artificial Intelligence

Some have existed since the early days of the IEC, and some were created in response to newer technological advances. As a recent example, the ISO/IEC joint committee on quantum technologies was established in early 2024.

In the first few decades of the IEC’s existence, progress was slow. The First and Second World Wars repeatedly interrupted committee work – including almost total suspension of IEC activities for 6 years.

When the technical committees were active, they focused on laying foundations for future scientific and electrical developments. The first standard, issued in 1925, set the international benchmarks for the resistance of copper.

One of the earliest safety-related standards was the IEC 60061 series (Lamp caps and holders together with gauges for the control of interchangeability and safety), first published in 1969.

With globally consistent benchmarks, units and terms in place, more standards rapidly followed. As of the end of 2025, the IEC had published over 7,850 international standards. Nearly 500 of those were issued during 2025 alone.

More than 2,000 of the IEC standards focus on electrical safety. They cover the manufacturing industry, IT systems and telecommunication, materials handling equipment, and much more.

International safety standardization bodies set universal meanings for the words and terms used in their standards. As an example, every ISO standard has a ‘terms and definitions’ section.

The IEC compiles their terminology into the International Electrical Vocabulary (IEV), otherwise known as the IEC 60050 series.

The first edition of the IEV was published in 1938. More than 260 parts of the series are available on the IEC’s online store as of 2026, and the series numbering has reached over 800.

The online version is ‘Electropedia’ (or ‘IEV Online’). It has over 22,000 entries in English and French. Electropedia lists definitions for commonly used phrases related to industrial safety, such as:

• Safety: “freedom from unacceptable risk” (ISO/IEC Guide 51)

• Functional safety: “part of the overall safety that depends on functional and physical units operating correctly in response to their inputs” (IEC/TR 61508-0)

• Safety-related control system: “part of the control system of a machine which implements a safety function by one or more subsystems” (IEC 62061)

• Safety Integrity Level (SIL): “number which indicates the required degree of confidence that a system will meet its specified safety functions with respect to systematic failures” (IEC 62280)

• Interlock: “arrangement of devices operating together
  - To prevent hazardous situations, or
  - To prevent damage to equipment or material, or
  - To prevent specified operations, or
  - To ensure correct operations” (IEC 60204-1)

Work on Electropedia remains the responsibility of Technical Committee 1 (Terminology).

Thanks to the IEC’s committees, and Electropedia’s definitions of safety-related terms, IEC standards are clear, purposeful, and support global standardization and compliance.

In part 2 of this article series, we’ll go into more detail with examples of IEC standards that have transformed industrial safety for the better.

After that, in part 3, read about IDEC’s long-term contributions to international safety standardization and products that conform to specific IEC standards.