by Daniel Gross he International Organization of Standards (ISO), based in bucolic Geneva, Switzerland, rarely attracts the attention of slick business magazines and television networks. But perhaps it should. After all, industrial and commercial standards stand at the center of our increasingly global system of trade, manufacturing, and exchange. The ISO was founded in February, 1947, as engineers and scientists forged a new force for international harmony. The first ISO standard was published in 1951  a standard reference temperature for industrial length measurement. More standards are added each year. The 813 issued in 2001 brought the total to 13,544, covering everything from cinematography to cryogenic vessels. Some, of course, are more useful than others. An ISO standard on smart-card thickness allows a tourist to use the same ATM machine in Beijing, Brussels, or Boston. More broadly, industrial standards permit a can of Coca-Cola to look, feel, and taste the same in Red Square as it does in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. The story of standards starts with the railroads. Early 19th century railroads were designed to connect one town to another. But you could only haul goods over two different lines if the rails were laid down with the same gauge. So in 1846 the British government smartly decreed all railroads should be laid down precisely four feet, eight and one half inches apart. This distance became the so-called standard gauge in the U.S., which, nonetheless failed to impose uniform standards. Throughout the South, for example, five-foot gauge was prevalent. And some historians theorize that the Confederacy s lack of a standardized rail network hampered its ability to move men and materiel efficiently during the Civil War. In the 19th century, time was generally kept locally, and dictated by the sun. The result: at 10:00 a.m. in Philadelphia, it might be 9:48 a.m. in Pittsburgh. But since trains had the ability to travel far enough, and fast enough, to confuse people, U.S. railroads in 1883 divided the nation into four time zones. It took another 35 years for Congress to codify the railroads practice for the broader public with the Standard Time Act of 1918. Of course, the U.S. has remained aloof from some nearly universal standards. The metric system was first developed in France in the late 18th century. But more than two centuries after its creation, the United States  alone among industrialized nations  has yet to formally adopt what is, in essence, the world s operating system. The fact that we use feet while most of our trading partners use meters highlights the occasionally astonishing degree to which our affairs are still not governed by global standards. Despite the advent of the Euro, currencies remain stubbornly diverse. And in Britain, drivers persist in keeping to the left-hand side of the car. Indeed, as the global marketplace becomes more tightly integrated, significant pockets of the world continue to hew to their own standards. Daniel Gross is editor of Sternbusiness.