Mechanical Engineering Home > Seminars > Fall 2000

Fall 2000

Ergonomics In Crisis: Ergonomics And Business In The Dark Days Of Germany's Collapse, 1929-1932

by

Jennifer Alexander
Assistant Professor
History of Science
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Wednesday, September 13, 2000
3:35-4:30 p.m.
Room 108 ME
Broadcast on UNITE Channel A
Coffee and cookies will be available in 152 ME following the seminar

This presentation looks at the historical development of ergonomics and human efficiency studies in Germany between the world wars. Industry and government expended increasing resources on such studies, even as Germany entered a period of acute economic, social, and political crisis. In particular, I examine a travelling exhibit on "Worker seating and work spaces," 1929-1932, which was sponsored by one of Germany's most visible economic institutions, the Reichskuratorium für Wirtschaftlichkeit (RKW), or the National Board for Economy and Efficiency. The RKW, using government and industrial subsidies, mounted this exhibit during the precise period in which the republican government in Germany collapsed, as it dismantled its programs of social welfare in the face of worldwide economic depression, during a period which was marked by extreme unemployment and expanding street violence, and which culminated in the Nazi seizure of power. Why, I ask, was ergonomics so important, and what did business and government leaders see in ergonomics that made them willing to expend their scarce resources on it? In conclusion, I suggest that ergonomics was a political and social tool, and not merely a technical matter.

Jennifer Alexander is an Assistant Professor in the Program in History of Science and Technology in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Minnesota. Her research credentials include work in the industrial, patent, and governmental archives of France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. She received the Ph.D. in History at the University of Washington in 1996, and is a fellow of the Centre de recherche en histoire des sciences et des techniques of the Centre national de reserche scientifique, Paris. She is completing a manuscript on the history of the concept of efficiency, and has begun a new project on the international history of labor and sport physiology.

Informal Faculty Luncheon: Wednesday, September 13, 2000, 12:00 noon. A table is reserved at McCormick's Restaurant, Radisson Hotel Metrodome. Professor Alexander will not be able to attend.