Book Reviews

The structure and content of this book are not quite what one might expect from the title. The author’s declared aim is to produce an ‘intellectual history’ of human factors and ergonomics (HFE) and to that end it contains long sections of quasi-philosophical musings on the nature of HFE as a discipline and profession, a long essay on the systems concept and some generalisations about HFE research which together comprise some two thirds of the book. A middle section on the formal and informal history contains factual and anecdotal accounts of some of the major developments in the USA, UK and Russia plus a chapter on research trends based on an analysis of selected publications in the Proceedings of the Human Factors Society between 1973 and 1994 and of the journal Human Factors between 1965 and 1994. Much of the historical material has previously been published in Meister and O’Brien (1996). The section on the UK is largely based on a very dated review paper by Cumming and Corkindale (1967) and somehow manages to omit any reference to the key role of Bartlett in providing a focus for the seminal work of Craik, Mackworth and Hick in Cambridge in the 1940’s or anything at all in the past 30 years! The Russian section draws on another publication (Bedny and Meister 1997) and stresses their fundamental cybernetic model of behaviour in contrast with the S-O-R model which Meister claims as the basis for much American theorising in HFE. These summaries are written in rather general terms but an appendix by Alluisi provides a brief factual account of the development of military psychology in the USA during the first World War, involving such well known names as R. M. Yerkes and J. B. Watson, through to the establishment of military research laboratories including the Aero-Medical Lab at Dayton, the Naval Research Lab at Washington DC and the Special Devices Center (where I was once briefly employed) on Long Island. The so-called ‘informal history’ derived from responses to a questionnaire by ‘first generation’ members of the Human Factors Society who gained their PhDs between 1940 and 1965 is clearly intended to give a more human feel to the bald historical facts, but is only partially successful since they are divorced from their broad historical context. Nevertheless letters from Tom Sheridan and Harry Wolbers giving their personal recollections add a human touch. The effect of abandoning the straightforward sequential model is that it is easy for the reader to lose track of important historical trends. There are so many things one would like to know about the social, technological and intellectual drivers underlying the development of HFE. Our perception of the operator has gradually changed from the robotnik of early 20th century Taylorism through system component of mid-century engineering to that of system user and technology-assisted decision-maker of today. Technology has also been subject to dramatic changes from power-augmentation and mass production of the early 20th century through automation (sensory augmentation) in mid-century to the virtual reality world of computer systems in which we now live. What effect did these and other changes have on the problems to be addressed? For example how did NASA’s Apollo programme affect classical ergonomics or how did the US Navy’s Aegis system impact research on decision-making and team work? Personalities can also be important. For example, how was Lloyd George persuaded to set up the Industrial Fatigue Research Board? How significant was Admiral Rickover’s support of the ONR programme of human factors research and what prompted General Thurman to promote the MANPRINT programme? How did the Vincennes incident in 1988 shift the focus of HFE from single operator to team work? A well-written history might be expected to shed some light on many questions of this sort. Much of the material in the book derives from responses to questionnaires. One addressed to long-established members of the Human Factors (and Ergonomics) Society failed to generate a coherent picture; the respondents were . aware that changes in the profession have occurred