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ERGONOMICS IN AUSTRALIA
Author(s) -
Ferguson David
Publication year - 1969
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1969.tb49663.x
Subject(s) - public health , citation , section (typography) , occupational safety and health , library science , medicine , political science , law , business , nursing , advertising , computer science
THE term "ergonomics", though introduced in 1949, is still not yet familiar, even among the medical profession. The term is derived from two Greek words, and means literally the customs, habits or laws of work (Editorial, 1957). It is used synonymously with the terms ''human engineering", "human factors" and "biotechnology", among others. In its 1967 prospectus, the Loughborough University of Technology in Britain, which has since 1961 conducted a full-time postgraduate course in ergonomics and cybernetics, deflnes ergonomics as follows: . . . the study of the capabilities and limitations of human performance at all kinds of mental and physical work tasks carried out in difl'erent physical environments. In industry it consists of the application of the knowledge thereby gained with the object of improving the efl'ectiveness and well-being of the individual through the design of equipment and control of environment. The definition indicates that ergonomics has two interdependent aspects-the provision of knowledge about the worker's capacities and the application of this knowledge to work and that it deals with all three main elements in any work situation-man, machine and environment. Ergonomics, then, to quote from J. C. Lane (1953), Director of Aviation Medicine in the Department of Civil Aviation and former President of the Ergonomics Society of Australia and NE'W Zealand, is "a somewhat eclectic accumulation of facts, principles and concepts derived mainly from the biological sciences of human anatomy, human physiology and experimental psychology, applied to the design of equipment for use by human operators".