The history of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the U.S. voluntary standards system is dynamic and evocative of the market-driven spirit that continues today.
In 1916, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) invited the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers (AIME) and the American Society for Testing Materials (now ASTM International) to join in establishing an impartial national body to coordinate standards development, approve national consensus standards, and halt user confusion on acceptability. These five organizations, who were themselves core members of the United Engineering Society (UES), subsequently invited the U.S. Departments of War, Navy and Commerce to join them as founders.
ANSI was originally established as the American Engineering Standards Committee (AESC). According to Paul G. Agnew, the first permanent secretary and head of staff in 1919, AESC started as an ambitious program and little else. Staff for the first year consisted of one executive, Clifford B. LePage, who was on loan from a founding member, ASME. An annual budget of $7,500 was provided by the founding bodies.
A year after AESC was founded, it approved its first standard on pipe threads. Its next major project was undertaken in 1920 when AESC began the coordination of national safety codes to replace the many laws and recommended practices that were hampering accident prevention. The first American Standard Safety Code was approved in 1921 and covered the protection of the heads and eyes of industrial workers. In its first ten years, AESC also approved national standards in the fields of mining, electrical and mechanical engineering, construction and highway traffic.
AESC was very active in early attempts to promote international cooperation and in 1926 hosted the conference that created the International Standards Association (ISA), an organization that would remain active until World War II and that would eventually become the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).