IEC

Abbreviation for the International Electrotechnical Commission. Founded in 1906 the International Electrotechnical Commission is a global organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies. They are responsible for organizing and establishing standards that are employed in all sorts of electronic equipment. This includes things as fundamental as establishing what are now common electrical unit terms such as Hertz, Gauss, Weber, etc. A few other standards they’ve done that are relevant to us are the IEC time code standard used by many DAT machines, the IEC power cable connection, which is the most common type of removable power cord connector used in our industry, and the set of standards known as IEC958, which define digital audio transfers between equipment.