Ergonomics
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PREFACE
Until recently conditions in industry were often rough. Long hours were worked in insanitary and murky workshops, often with little regard to the effects upon the workpeople who were considered to be expendable. Now, however, these adverse conditions have been recognized and remedied. However, the conditions of work are still not perfect. The obvious abuses of the human frame may have gone, but in their place have arisen stresses and strains which, taking effect only in the long term are often unrecognized.
With outbreak of World War II there was rapid development in the military field. Equipments became so complex that men were subjected to such stress that they either failed to get the best out of their equipment or suffered complete operational breakdown. It thus became essential for more to be known about the limitations of performance and the capacities of men. Extensive programs for research were undertaken, for instance, in the United Kingdom at Oxford in what became the Medical Research Climatic Working Efficiency Research Unit and in the Applied Psychology Research Unit at Cambridge, and in America at the Psychology Branch, Aero-Medical Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio. The Armed Forces themselves carried out both research and application in close collaboration with the laboratories...