Sooo… I’m a retired software engineer, who was sometimes a hardware engineer as well (but never a maritime worker)… I’m reading Marc Levinson’s “The Box (V2)”, which is very interesting… but I’m currently about 21% through the book, reading the section where MARAD and other agencies are involved in setting standards for container sizes…
This is actually one of the issues that I was wanting to read about, to see how these standards came to exist… but OMG … I’m remembering again, the various standards that I had to study in the electronics industry… there were a couple of times in my career, where my employer wanted me to get involved in standards development, but my mind would just go blank…
I think of all the work that has gone into the successive generations of the USB computer interface; it is an incredible, magical interface that does almost everything, seemingly without having to think about it, but My Gods, I cannot imagine ever getting myself embroiled in that quicksand…
Anyway, reading this section of the book, is reminding me again of my ancient feelings about standards committees… I’m so grateful that other folks were willing to do this, so I didn’t have to!!