A series of powerful international regulatory regimes have arisen especially in fields dealing with risk, such as banking, accountancy and the actuarial profession.
The need for safety and rescue at sea led to the building of remote lighthouses and the standardization of distress signals in the International Radiotelegraph Convention (1906).
In response to the sinking of the Titanic, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea of 1914 laid down standards for lifeboats and continuous radio watches.
ICAO adopted in 1956 the NATO Phonetic Alphabet (Alfa, Bravo, Charlie ...) for spelling out words when they might be misunderstood.
The 1864 Geneva Convention began the regulation of warfare, initially providing for the protection of those aiding sick and wounded soldiers.
However the 1925 Geneva Protocol outlawing chemical and biological warfare was largely adhered to in World War II, which did not see a repetition of the chemical warfare of World War I. British domination of navigation led to Greenwich Mean Time becoming a de facto international time standard from the eighteenth century.
The metric system of weights and measures, imposed in Revolutionary France in 1799, gained acceptance during the nineteenth century, especially in science.
The Metre Convention, signed in Paris in 1875 by 17 countries, created the International Bureau of Weights and Measures to define the units of the metric system.
Adopted by the Britain in 1821 and by other major currencies in the later nineteenth century, it collapsed with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and revivals in the 1920s were unsuccessful.