2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

National literature is generally defined as the corpus of written and oral works from a specific country or geographical region, or from people with ties to a specific country or region, that reflects the history, culture, and society of the people who live within its boundaries. For example, Canadian Literature, Québec Literature, American Literature, Caribbean Literature, and so on. Technical standards are not usually included in popular notions of national literature, which tend to focus on literature, songs, poetry, folklore, and history. Standards are a core literature of engineering.[1] Virtually every product, machine, device, process, system, and built structure must conform to one or more national and international standards. This paper explores the early history of technical standards in Canada from 1900 to 1950. This includes standards published by the Canadian Engineering Standards Association (CESA) from 1919-1950 and the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) from 1934-1950. This paper also presents the argument that technical standards are a form of national literature worthy of preservation, study, and teaching.[2] National standards are important because they reflect the technological, industrial, economic, and social development of countries and regions and, more broadly, the development of the international standards system during the twentieth century.[3] Although engineers tend to use current standards, there are times when they may need to consult historical standards. For example, in forensic engineering and civil engineering.[4] CESA was established in 1917, during World War I, and chartered in 1919. Like the American Engineering Standards Committee, which was established in 1918, CESA was heavily influenced by the British Engineering Standards Association, which was established in 1901.[5] CESA published its first standard in 1920. From 1920 to 1935, CESA published about 15 new or updated standards. From 1934 forward, during the Great Depression, the number of published Canadian standards increased dramatically. In 1935-39, for example, CESA published approximately 75 standards. During World War II, CESA issued dozens of new standards including several in 1942 related to civil defense. CGSB was established in 1934 under the National Research Council Act as the Government Purchasing Standards Committee.[6] Today, CGSB maintains dozens of standards related to, among other things, petroleum, fuel and related products, textiles, food, glass and related products, buildings, protective clothing, and office supplies. During the 1930s and 40s, the CESA and CGSB sold copies of standards to companies as well as schools, universities, and prisons. However, few of these early standards appear to have survived to the present day. This paper describes and presents data on the number of Canadian national standards published from 1919-1950 held in libraries and online archives in 2024. It also presents sources of information on Canadian standards.

References
[1] J. L. Gbur and D. Solomon, "Promoting Technical Standards Education in Engineering," presented at the 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016. [Online]. Available: https://peer.asee.org/26005.
[2] T. L. Minder, "The Engineering Standard as a Form of Literature," MA, Graduate Library School, University of Chicago, 1963.
[3] J. Yates and C. N. Murphy, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting Since 1880. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021.
[4] M. Stevenson, "How and Why Things Fail: Forensic Engineers and Information Specialists," presented at the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference and Info Expo, Chicago, Illinois, July 15-18, 2012.
[5] C. Group, 100 Years of Holding the Future to a Higher Standard: CSA Group's Centennial Anniversary, Toronto: CSA Group, 2019, p. 83. [Online]. Available: https://www.csagroup.org/wp-content/uploads/CSA_Centennial_Book_071019.pdf. Accessed on: 24 September 2024.
[6] N. Hillmer, "Canadian General Standards Board," The Canadian Encyclopedia: Historica Canada, 2013. [Online]. Available: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-general-standards-board. Accessed on: 23 September 2024.