Standards are strange beasts: they are everywhere and pervasive and, at the same time, largely invisible. In a messy and imperfect world, standards enable us to rely on aspects of the world behaving in expected and predictable ways. They are thus often so deeply embedded in everyday life that only a minority of the most obvious ones sometimes become noticeable, especially if they are contested (Netscape versus Internet Explorer or VHS versus Betamax), if they are in fact absent (when travelling abroad without an adaptor for power plugs) or if they fail. Despite this ubiquity, the concept of standards is not easy to define. Scholars from the sociology of science like Lawrence Busch or Geoff Bowker and Susan Leigh Star define standardization as a process of constructing uniformities across time and space, through the generation of agreed rules. ISO/IEC Guide 2: 1996, Definition 3.2 defines a standard as

This quite cumbersome definition implies that standards are documents and are voluntary, reflecting the practice enshrined in international economic law, which makes a distinction between obligatory technical regulations and voluntary standards.

In their book, Yates and Murphy rely on this latter definition and focus on the historical emergence of the international, multilateral system of standard setting as embodied by the Geneva-based ISO, which is the short form, but not an acronym, of the International Organization for Standardization. This system is expert-based, taking into account views of both producers and users, and standards are agreed by consensus. This system has its roots in the second half of the nineteenth century when numerous international congresses started the process of standardization of technical infrastructures that crossed national borders (telegraphy, electricity, railways, postal systems etc.), thereby establishing a long-lasting tradition of technocratic internationalism. The authors focus their account on three waves of institutional innovation in this system, each led by what they call ‘standardization entrepreneurs’, who were instrumental in setting up, shaping, changing and consolidating the institutions governing standard setting. The first of these entrepreneurs is Charles le Maistre (1874–1953). Beginning in 1881, when only Great Britain had a national association of electrical engineers (the IEE), a series of International Electrical Congresses were held to standardize electrical units. The 1904 International Electrical Congress in Saint Louis became a turning point for industrial standardization. At it, the delegates called for the establishment of a permanent international commission for standard setting. Colonel R.E.B. Crompton (1845–1940) organized a 1906 meeting in London to found the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as such a permanent organization. Crompton put Le Maistre in charge of the commission's office established in London. In 1908 when the statutes of the IEC were formally adopted, Le Maistre was appointed general secretary, a position he held until 1953. The IEC established many of the procedures for voluntary standard setting still in use today, in particular delegating technical work to specialized subcommittees, the principle of one-country-one-vote and consensus. Le Maistre was particularly devoted to the internationalizing of standards. He succeeded in encouraging the foundation of many national standardization bodies – a prerequisite for international coordination – but his efforts for setting up an international body did not bear fruit in the Great Depression and the pre-war years. The internationalization of standards received a massive boost in the immediate post-war years with the establishment of the ISO, which heralded the second wave of innovation. Sweden's Olle Sturén (1919–2003), general secretary of the ISO from 1968 to 1986, urged developing countries to join the ISO and tried to convince governments to reference private international standards in legislation – which contributed to blurring the line between public and private standards and to making the distinction between voluntary and mandatory standards in many fields meaningless. This led to a considerable strengthening of the ISO, but in the 1980s new types of organization emerged in the context of the developing Internet, in particular IETF and W3C. These organizations, embodying the third wave of innovation, often challenged the established principles of standard setting – which were very time-consuming and not fit for the fast-developing new technology – and with time carved out an increasingly important niche in the ecosystem of standard-setting bodies. The ISO did not manage to gain a strong foothold in regulating this important technological field and moved into a completely new arena: the development of standards for managerial (ISO 9000 series), environmental and social issues.

Yates and Murphy offer a solid, illuminating, readable and well-documented account of the workings of groups of engineers and of institutions which have huge impacts on everyday life but do not receive strong attention in the historical study of science and technology. The focus on engineering standards and the ISO unfortunately largely disregards areas such as food and agricultural quality standards, which are governed by a range of other multilateral bodies such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission or UNECE, and which can affect the livelihoods of large numbers of people, in particular in developing countries. Amy A. Quark has described the highly contested nature of quality standards for cotton (Global Rivalries: Standards Wars and the Transnational Cotton Trade, 2013). She shows how, since 1870, the ‘mastery’ of such standards has moved from UK traders to the United States Department of Agriculture, where fibre science arose as the arbiter of quality, and how China has recently emerged as new contender attempting to achieve more control over the definition and measurement of cotton quality. In Yates and Murphy's account the role of standards as tools, often based on contested science, for mediating rivalries in a globalized world is not very prominent. It may be the case that standards for screw threads or for the avoidance of radio interference show little overt politicization – perhaps such standards are so fundamental for the general functioning of modern societies that there is little appetite for continuous contestation.

Yates and Murphy offer a welcome complement to the existing literature on standards by focusing on the often nitty-gritty details of standard setting and lifting out of obscurity a large group of engineers who appear to be truly motivated by advancing what they perceive as the public good and not particular corporate or national interests.