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The man who coined , 'ergonomics" dies

3rd March 1984, Page 40
3rd March 1984
Page 40
Page 40, 3rd March 1984 — The man who coined , 'ergonomics" dies
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"WHAT'S ERGONOMICS?" people asked when a commercial-vehicle manufacturer first announced that its new driver's cab incorporated those principles. It meant, they discovered, that the cab had been designed to increase the driver's efficiency by improved comfort and convenience.

The man who coined the word to describe the study of the efficiency of persons in their working environment was a professor of occupational psychology, Kenneth Frank Hywel Murrell, who has died at the age of 75.

He gave the word not only to the language but to the Ergonomics Research Society, of which he was the first honorary secretary in 1949. Tube Investments is credited with the first ergonomics department in the country and Professor Murrell became its director in 1952. Drivers whose workplaces have been converted from rabbit hutches to boudoirs should remember him with gratitude.