1 STANDARDS TEST METHODS AND SPECIFICATIONS

It does not take much imagination to appreciate the importance of standards to trade and the exchange of information. Fortunately, rubber technologists had a strong sense of order and from the early days of the industry have supported the development of standard test procedures and the use of these in product specifications. The development of standards is ongoing and, because of increased demand for product reliability and fears of liability legislation, they are probably even more important today. National Governments have expressed their commitment to standards and there has been much discussion of the role of standards in industrial strategy. Nevertheless, in the highly competitive economic conditions of recent times standardisation has been struggling to receive the funding and the priority that it really merits.

Standards is a general term covering the documents published by a standards making body, such as the International Standards Organisation (ISO). The word specification is reserved for those standards which specify minimum requirements for materials or products. Other types of standard include Methods of Test, Glossaries of Terms, Guides and Codes of Practice. It follows that a specification may refer to several methods of test and that a commercially written specification can refer to nationally or internationally standardised test methods.

In terms of trade, it is ultimately specifications which are important, with test methods acting as building blocks. For this reason, it made chronological sense for the test method standards to be developed first, and indeed this was generally the...