IEC 60212:2010 gives the accepted conditions of exposure time, temperature, atmospheric humidity and liquid immersion for use in testing solid electrical insulating materials. The range is sufficiently wide to enable suitable conditions to be selected so that either of the primary objects, set out below as a) and b), of conditioning can be achieved. These objectives aim to obtain greater reproducibility of test results by: a) partly counteracting the variations of the properties of the material due to the past history of the test specimens (often known as 'normalizing', here called preconditioning), and b) ensuring uniformity of conditions during the testin