Formed in 1963 by the merger of the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) and the AIEE (American Institute of Electrical Engineers). Though based in the USA, it represents electrical and electronics engineers throughout the world. The IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) is one of several special-interest groups.

The IEEE is an accredited organization for writing US national standards in telecommunications and computing (see ANSI). For example, Project 802 is a long-running project that manages the production of standards for the physical layer of local area networks, ensuring that standards are produced quickly whenever new technologies such as wireless or infrared become available.

http://www.ieee.org/ The IEEE home page