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Let’s see, guidelines for information and communication technology supply chain security,
preparation and characterization of Charpy V-notch test pieces for indirect verification
of pendulum impact machines, methods for the assessment of departure from roundness, this
is going to be a good episode because its about standardization, or rather, more specifically,
ISO standard 3103, the internationally standard way of preparing a cup of tea.
First a bit of context.
Way off in Geneva, Switzerland is this place, the International Organization for Standardization.
A place that, according to this google reviewer, is filled with “snobby eurocrats,” but
according to Urban Dictionary “eurocrat” is a not so nice word for officials running
the European Union but the people in this building are not working for or with the European
Union at all so this review is false.
That’s because the ISO is a supranational organization—its above governments.
162 countries worldwide are members—Canada, Egypt, Japan, Panama, Peru, Finland… just
kidding I’m not going to list them all but I will show you this super-quick list because
I don’t have the budget to animate a map of the countries.
All of the members, except for these ones have their own organization of standards.
For example, the US has the American National Standards Institute, France has the Association
Française de Normalisation, and Japan has the… uhhh, Japanese Standards Association?
This organization has created common standards for 21,802 products, objects, and processes
so that things can work all across the world.
For example, one of the best known ISO standards is for this—the shipping container, also
known as the ISO container.
The standardization and implementation of this container literally made it possible
for manufacturers to make products on one side of the world and ship them to the other.
That’s because, no matter where you go in the world, ships, cranes, trains, and trucks
will all be made to work with this one size of container.
If every country or shipping company made their own container sizes, just imagine the
amount of logistics it would take to get a container from continent to continent.
Thanks to ISO standard 668 you know that every shipping container in the world will be exactly
eight feet wide.
There’s even an ISO standard on how to run a standards organization, but just like anything,
ISO standards are not free, and they're not even cheap.
For example, for all 12 parts of ISO standard 26262, about road vehicle safety, you’ll
have to shell up $1,600.
But back to the cup of tea, ISO standard 3103.
I knew any ISO standard with a controversy section on Wikipedia would make a good video
so I spent $40 plus shipping to get this four page document on how to make a cup of tea,
because I hate money.
It starts out by making a few definitions and then tells you what you need—a pot and
bowl.
If you go to the annex you learn that the larger pot has to have a maximum capacity
of 310 ml plus or minus 8 ml and the small pot 150 ml plus or minus 4 ml.
You even get a page showing the exact dimensions of the pots and bowls you should use for this
standard tea preparation.
The exact tea preparation process is pretty standard until you get to this part: “prepare
the liquid as described in 7.2.1 but pour it into the bowl after the milk.”
Most British people vehemently protest this ordering, but, according to the beginning
of the document, the standard has been officially approved by the government of the United Kingdom,
and the USSR?
Perhaps being the more sensible inhabitants of the British Isles, the Irish have, however,
officially expressed disapproval of ISO standard 3103.
Now, before you go and say that it’s absurd that the ISO sells a tea recipe for so much,
you have the consider the actual use of such a thing.
Imagine researchers were doing a study on how ethnic background affects taste perception
with samples in Brazil, the UK, India, and Japan.
The UK, India, and Japan are all tea-loving nations that would have no problem brewing
a cup of tea, but its entirely possible that researchers in Brazil would never have brewed
tea before in their life.
By all using ISO standard 3103, all four experiment sites would brew the exact same cup of tea
which eliminates the preparation of tea as a variable in the experiment.
For this exact reason, there are also ISO standards for tons of other beverages and
foods like coffee, cereal, chocolate, juices and more.
So, if you want to be sure you’re a standard, conforming, bureaucracy-loving individual,
just be sure to send Switzerland your $40 and buy this recipe for the internationally
standard cup of tea.
If you don’t want to pay $40 but still don’t know how to make tea, you can go to Skillshare.
Skillshare is an online learning community that has over 16,000 classes on pretty much
anything and everything.
If you want to learn something, chances are Skillshare can teach you.
That opening line was not even a joke.
There are dozens of classes about tea, but there are also some more, uh… useful classes
about topics like graphic design, drawing, photography, and more.
An annual membership gives you unlimited access to their classes for less than $10/month,
but the first 200 people to sign up over Skl.sh/HAI2 can learn whatever they want on Skillshare
for free for their first two months and they’ll be supporting the channel while they’re
at it.