An alert is given that a hazardous zone has been breached: a person has entered the zone and may be at physical risk. As a result, the machine operating in that zone is automatically switched off. This is an example of...
A controversial point system, gender targeted advertising for study programmes and other campaigns have led to an increasing number of women training to work in electrical engineering.
The IEC Systems Committee (SyC) concept covers different domains and technologies rather than single ones. Its work begins at the systems level rather than at that of individual products and supports the investigation of...
Until Napoleon’s army came across a large slab of rock buried under the foundations of a building in the Nile Delta, in 1799, nobody knew how to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Thanks to the discovery of the Rosetta...
For most of us, a plot is what keeps us reading a detective story until the end but there is another more technical meaning to the word which is well known to all those who work in areas related to sound and hearing.
Household appliances have developed into an immense industry. According to Statista, global sales of domestic appliances amounted to more than €200 billion in 2019. This is unsurprising given the many household...
The global medical devices market is booming and expected to reach USD 612.7 billion by 2025, according to a report published by Fortune Business Insights.
Products come in many shapes and sizes. They could be systems, services, goods, software or any combination of these, and range from a child’s toy, to complex safety-critical systems in an industrial plant.
You may not be aware that your mobile phone or your tablet will have undergone a series of stringent tests before commercialization. These tests are designed to make sure that electrical or electronic devices can...
Access to affordable and reliable energy is a basic need. Not only is it one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) established by the United Nations in its framework for building a better world by 2030, but also...
We live in a world which does not often take the needs of most people with disabilities into account. While progress is gradually being made, many of the consumer electronics appliances we use every day are not designed...
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we all had to stay at home more than usual, our households becoming the ultimate refuge against the virus. Everybody felt safer in confinement, but especially vulnerable groups: the...
The goal of SDG 13 is to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Relying on renewable energies wherever possible helps to reduce CO2 emissions, which goes some way towards achieving this objective.
Many IEC Standards are paving the way for a direct current (DC) world. The most recent edition of IEC 60947-1 is a foundational standard for industrial switches and controlgear, which includes much improved testing...
As concerns over climate change escalate, the case for using clean sources of energy becomes obvious. Renewable energy (RE) generation is gaining ground year on year. Many of these RE sources fluctuate, however, and are...
Millions of kilometres of winding wires are produced every day – enough to go around the earth at least ten times! IEC Standards make sure they are used safely in millions of devices. They also pave the way for future...
According to Cybersecurity Ventures' Cyber Crime Annual Report 2019, the annual cost of cyber crime for the global economy will double between 2015 and 2021 to reach USD 6 trillion by 2021. In addition to financial...
A new standard has been published, IEC 63077, that specifies the process for ensuring the performance and safety of refurbished medical imaging equipment.
