著者

詫間 直樹

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.46, no.241, pp.14-24, 2007 (Released:2021-08-11)

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In the 1990s, Japan undertook to improve its national measurement standards with a view to assisting the country's advanced R&D programs. I discussed in an earlier paper that this was achieved by the expansion of the notion of R&D infrastructure. This paper shows the importance of industrial measurement standards for corporate R&D, production and maintenance. The New Standard Code revised at the GATT Uruguay Round required the global harmonization of technical standards and conformity assessment procedures. This New Standard Code played a major role in the recognition of importance of industrial measurement standards dissemination system in Japan in the 1990s. This paper considers the establishment of industrial measurement standards dissemination system in Japan for over a period of 30 years. By doing so, we can obtain a rough pattern of evolution of the industrial measurement standards dissemination system : In the 1970s an attempt to imitate the American traceability system was made, but it proved futile. Then, in the 1980s a Japanese alternative traceability system began to take form. A full-fledged traceability system emerged only in the 1990s thanks to external pressures. This historical pattern connotes Japan's backwardness in establishing a measurement standards dissemination system.