The term ‘industrial archaeology’, first put into print by Michael Rix in 1955, has since been widely adopted throughout the world to describe the identification, recording, and, where appropriate, preservation of the structures, artifacts and sites of past economic and social activity. The character, topical coverage and time‐range of the term are considered and then the varying ways by which recording and preservation are carried out in different parts of the world are described. The third section of the paper discusses the way in which IA is organized in different countries, contrasting particularly the grassroots organization adopted in Britain and some other countries with the centralized model followed elswhere. A select bibliography is appended.