Industrial psychology in Great Britain / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Industrial psychology in Great Britain / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    minutes, and the three tests were consecutively given during these three periods. On the other hand, too many changes of work must obviously have a deleterious effect on output. In a manufacturing chemist’s works, an increase of from 17 to 20 per cent, in the wages earned occurred when the operative was changing approximately every half- hour from one process to another, instead of, as before, carrying out from ioo to 250 different changes of process in the course of the day, giving an average duration of from 2 to 5 minutes for each process. Closely allied to preservation of the right attitude and posture is preservation of the optimal rhythm and of the successful co-ordination of the various successive movements that make up an operation. Just as the members of a boating eight become ‘ragged’ in fatigue, using useless energy with relatively useless results, so the tired worker is apt to ‘fall to pieces,’ and his rhythm and skill suffer. This has been strikingly re¬ vealed in a study of the operation of ‘roughing,’ i.e. removing scratches and imperfections from spoons and forks, which are pressed for this purpose against a rotating wooden leather-covered wheel. A recording wattmeter was introduced to record the number and duration of the rougher’s strokes, the pauses between the strokes, and the pressure of the strokes against the wheel, at different hours throughout the day. It was found (cf. Fig. 2) that the number of strokes per spoon,