The History of the .ISO File Extension - out of curiosity

[TheDarkKnight]

So...I'm sitting around thinking about the .ISO file extension. And I say to myself, I wonder what that stands for...if anything. I know that there is the organization itself called International Organization for Standardization. So it could stand for that. But if it did, wouldn't that be a horrible name for a file extension given the fact this organization is responsible for the standardization of hundreds of standards?

We don't see .UDF file extensions on any files that contain a Universal Disk Format file system do we? If anything, shouldn't the extension have been named .966 (DOS-compliant) or .9660. Or how about .CDF or .CDFS? Wouldn't those have been better choices? Did somebody think that the ISO-9660 file system would be the first and last file system ever standardized by the ISO?

I thought this was a horrible decision made by the ISO itself. But then I thought, maybe they didn't have anything to do with the chosen file extension name itself. Maybe that was a decision more likely made by some programmer, maybe a single programmer. Maybe one of the guys who wrote a PC image burning application or image mounting software.

Anybody who can shed some real history on this and how this horrible extension came to be? I guess hindsight is always 20/20. Just like a lot of stuff in the PC universe but it just became visible to me today more than in the past.

All comments/thoughts welcome.

 

[corkyg]

You ask a good question. How and why does IOS become ISO? Basically it a matter of words and languages. It's all in the name. Because 'International Organization for Standardization' would have different acronyms in different languages (IOS in English, OIN in French for Organisation internationale de normalisation), the founders decided to give it the short form ISO. ISO is derived from the Greek isos, meaning equal.

 

[JackMDS]

1. International Standard was a "Naive" good idea before few entities started to dominate the Computing realm, and decided to take advantage of their (self interest) power.

2. At the time IOS was already in use for "Input/Output System".

BTW, before any one mentions Apple IOS, please note that the real McCoy is actually Apple iOS.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

1. International Standard was a "Naive" good idea before few entities started to dominate the Computing realm, and decided to take advantage of their (self interest) power.

2. At the time IOS was already in use for "Input/Output System".

BTW, before any one mentions Apple IOS, please note that the real McCoy is actually Apple iOS.

Cisco iOS.

Anyway, it's short for ISO 9660. (The standard format for CD-ROMs.)

There weren't a lot of other file formats at the time, and the ISO image files were intended to be primarily used for CD mastering. There were other disk image file formats floating around as well, for floppy disk images. You can still find them on Abandonware sites, etc.

Did somebody think that the ISO-9660 file system would be the first and last file system ever standardized by the ISO?

No. But they probably didn't think about it. It was named for its intended use, nothing more.