Engineers and the Rule of Standards

This panel brings together new research on the history of engineers through the lens of standards and standardizing practices. While standards are widespread and omnipresent tools for organizing and coordinating economic activity, historians have relatively recently started to appreciate the centrality of such practices to the histories of business and technology. The papers in this panel focus on engineers as standard-setters working within engineering organizations, on infrastructure projects, and for the military. They offer case studies reaching from the early nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century and span national and imperial contexts. They explore standard-setting as an integral part of contentious efforts to govern across jurisdictional boundaries, redistribute power within the political economy, and establish asymmetrical forms of exchange. In so doing, the papers highlight different approaches to conceptualizing standards and the work they do as well as contributing to a larger research framework in which standardizing practices are foregrounded.