Ergonomics
/ˌɜrɡəˈnɑmɪks/noun
The design of tools, tasks and workplaces to fit the people using them.
The Greek roots
Literally: “laws of work”
The story of the word
The Polish scholar Wojciech Jastrzębowski published an outline of ergonomja in 1857 and nobody outside Poland read it. Hywel Murrell coined the word again in England in 1949, out of wartime work on why well-trained crews still misread dials and pulled the wrong lever. One of those investigations found pilots retracting the landing gear after touchdown because the two controls felt identical, and the fix, a small rubber wheel on one and a wedge on the other, is still in cockpits. ἔργον hides in energy, work within, and in the surgeon, the one who works by hand.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1949
Same family
In a sentence
The ergonomics of the new till layout cut reaching by half and nobody noticed, which is the point.