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The UK doesn't put the country of origin on their postage stamps, because they invented them [1], so there were no ambiguities to lift. That's the same reason
by evanb 3y ago
The UK doesn't put the country of origin on their postage stamps, because they invented them [1], so there were no ambiguities to lift.
That's the same reason the US is +1 country code and holds .gov
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_and_postal_history_of_Great_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_and_postal_hist...
- N19PEDL2 3y agoAlso the same reason, I guess, English-speaking countries have 0 and 1 as country codes in ISBN numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISBN_registration_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISBN_registration_grou...
- JNRowe 3y agoThere was an interesting use case for the early zero language code. It allowed the checksum to remain intact when switching from early SBN to ISBN, all you had to do was prefix with zero. It isn't quite so simple today, if you find an old British book you can't simply tack a zero on the front. It is mentioned in the Wikipedia link, but buried a little. I realise ISBN history is the epitome of super-nerdy, but the evolution path from $just_some_retailer through to the Bookland "country" is really quite interesting from an interoperability perspective.