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» Status of the European Standardisation

In the year 1991 the document CECC 00015/1 was published under the protectorat of CENELEC. It was the first European standard dealing with the handling of ESDS. A short time later on, it was converted into EN 100 015/1 for the EU-countries, translated into local languages (published in the UK as BS 5783). Unfortunately the standard contained several technical mistakes, most likely not noticed under the time pressure for a brisk publication. Furthermore, the document was written in a manner difficult to understand for a non-skilled user.

The responsibility for the revision of EN 100 015/1 had changed over to the IEC (Internation Electronic Committe) meanwhile in order to prepare an international standard.The revised paper was published as Technical Report (TR) IEC 61340-5- 1 in December 1998, edited by the meanwhile founded Technical Committee TC 101 "Electrostatics".

This technical report, as well as the corrigendum edited in 1999 has been approved as a European Standard in March 2001 under the reference EN 61340-5-1 with the following title : "Electrostatics, part 5-1 : protection of electronic devices from electrostatic phenomena - General requirements".

Since then, this European Standard is replacing the EN 100015. It is also to notice that the IEC has published some other documents to be complementary to the current standard :

IEC/TS 61340-5-2 : Protection of electronic devices from electrostatic phenomena February 1999 User guide

IEC 61340-4-1 : Standard test methods for specific applications November 2003 Electrical resistance of floor coverings and installed floors

IEC 61340-4-3 : Standard test methods for specific applications August 2001 Footwear

IEC 61340-4-5 : Standard test methods for specific applications July 2004 Methods for characterizing the electrostatic protection of footwear and flooring in combination with a person

IEC/TR 61340-2-2 : Measurement methods - July 2000 Measurement of chargeability From Outside Europe, there are also the standards published by th US-organisation ESD-Association mainly the ANSI/ESD S541 approved as an american standard in March.