ASTM International

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ASTM International
Formation 1898
Type International nongovernmental organization
Purpose/focus Standards development
Headquarters West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania
Location United States
Chairman of the Board Thomas A. Schwartz
Website astm.org

ASTM International (previously known as the American Society for Testing Materials) is an organization that develops and publishes international technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services using a voluntary consensus process. ASTM supports thousands of volunteer technical committees, which draw their members from around the world and collectively develop and maintain more than 12,000 standards.

ASTM International publishes the Annual Book of ASTM Standards each year in print, CD-ROM, and online versions. As of June 2013 the print and CD-ROM versions cost U.S. $10,587.[1]

History

ASTM was founded in 1898 as the American Section of the International Association for Testing and Materials[2][3], predating other standards organizations such as BSI Group (1901), Deutsches Institut für Normung (1917), American National Standards Institute (1918), and Association Française de Normalisation (1926). The organization was created by a group of scientists and engineers, led by Charles Benjamin Dudley, to address the frequent rail breaks plaguing the fast-growing railroad industry. Four years later the organization was in full swing, fully incorporated in 1902 as the American Society for Testing Materials.[3]

On December 11, 2001, the organization announced it would change its name to ASTM International to reflect global participation in ASTM and worldwide use of its standards.[4]

In 2009, a joint effort by standards development organizations Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN), and ASTM International created a single, centralized database for medical device standards.[5]

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