*ASTM International*, known until 2001 as the *American Society for Testing and Materials* (*ASTM*), is an international standards organization <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards_organization> that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_standard> for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_(economics)>. The organization is headquarters is in West Conshohocken, PA <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Conshohocken,_Pennsylvania>.
ASTM, founded in 1898 as the American Section of the International Association for Testing and Materials, predates other standards organizations such as BSI <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Standards> (1901), DIN <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Institut_f%C3%BCr_Normung> (1917), ANSI <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Standards_Institute> (1918) and AFNOR <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_Fran%C3%A7aise_de_Normalisation> (1926). That much Wikipedia. For us it is important to know that ASTM is the U.S. standards developing organization (unlike ANSI) and one of the largest, and that it adheres best to the metric units commitment. The reason that I write about it now is that I noticed a deviation from their policy of "metric units first." For a while the flagship publication, the Standardization News, published data with units in the reversed order. Contacting ASTM, I was informed that it was a mistake and that "we will do that, except for quotations or a special case (I think sieves is one)." A good news for 2015. Stan Jakuba
