American National Standards Institute
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private, non-profit organisation that produces industrial standards in the United States. It is a member of ISO and IEC.
ANSI's standards fall in many areas. In computing, ANSI standardized the ASCII character set in X3.4, control codes in X3.41 and control sequences (to be used e.g. for moving the cursor around the screen of a "dumb" terminal) in X3.64.
Its photographic exposure system became the basis for the ISO's system, currently used worldwide.
ANSI was founded on October 19, 1918 as the American Engineering Standards Committee and reorganised as the American Standards Association in 1928. In 1966 was reorganised as the United States of America Standards Institute. In 1969 it changed its name to American National Standards Institute.
In Microsoft Windows, the phrase "ANSI" also refers to any of the national character encodings supported by the system. These are similar to ISO 8859, leading many to falsely assume that they are identical.
