Our archival research has revealed that an Institute for Ambiguous Standards was established in 1965 by Hikmet, Hayri and Turgut Beyler and Mefküre Hanım.

 

After five years of the establishment of TSE in 1960 (Turkish Standards Institute) for the definition of ‘standards of procedures and services related to any kind of material and product’, with the liberalist approach of the 1961 constitution, their motivation was to indulge in the realm of ambiguous standards in a world where absolute measurements and exact standards were in the dawn. Their main inspiration was The Law of the Municipality of Bursa, issued in 1502 under the request of Sultan II. Bayezid Han.

The original ASI has operated between 1965 to 1976, issued reports, leaflets, PSA’s (public service announcements in radio and later television), sharing the information with state institutes and organizations through textual, audial and visual means. Their main aim was to establish the missing connection between the physico-social standards and measurements of the ‘old’ world with the physico-mathematical ones of the ‘new’ one in the 20th century. We could only reach this photograph from the opening celebration held in Istanbul, but the research continues.