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Just a question for curiosity's sake; what do the letters ISO stand for?

I know that ISO files follow ISO-9660, the ISO in which stands for International Standards Organisation, but a lot of file formats will presumably follow some ISO standard, so that seems incorrect.

I couldn't find any answers to this on Wiki / Google

My best guess so far is: Image Standard Optical.

fixer1234
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JohnLBevan
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  • According to Wikipedia, `The name ISO is taken from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media` ... – Levans Dec 28 '13 at 11:44

2 Answers2

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I know that ISO files follow ISO-9660, the ISO in which stands for International Standards Organisation, but a lot of file formats will presumably follow some ISO standard, so that seems incorrect.

Yes, but then they have a different name for the file system (not ISO-9660).

Also, this little logical fact has never stopped someone from ignoring it. The file extension does come - as per Wikipedia - from that (the ISO-9660 file system).

SOmeone just had to pick something and made that choise.

TomTom
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Did you really check wikipedia?

ISO 9660 (...) is a file system standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for optical disc media

Teun Vink
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    I guess OP found it interesting that only `.ISO` files have `ISO` as its extension. Since `.PDF` files follow ISO standard but not named after the standard (but rather, "Portable Document Format"), OP questioned the origin of `ISO` in `.ISO`, which is however still given because of the ISO 9660 standard. – Frenzy Li Dec 28 '13 at 12:00