Word: ergons
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...Stumpf set for himself years ago was "to make a beautiful chair comfortable." He accomplished that by drawing on more than a decade of careful thought about chairs--not just how they ought to look, but how officeworkers lean and squirm and relax while sitting in them. Stumpf's Ergon (1976) and Equa (1984) are the two most important chairs, surely, of the past quarter-century, handsome, generous and deeply elegant. They are also ubiquitous: the Herman Miller company has sold nearly 2 million Ergons and, in less than two years, some 350,000 Equas...
...name for his human-factor investigations, ergonomics, was not yet current, but Stumpf made charts, diagrams and, eventually, time-lapse films, becoming a sort of Muybridge of the 9-to-5 realm. In the mid-'70s at Herman Miller, he began turning that research into drawings. The Ergon is a descendant of Eames' designs, an out-of-sequence missing link between the lucid but barebones molded-plywood chair (1946) and the voluptuous, baroque lounge chair (1956) so beloved of big men with dens. The quiet swerves of Ergon's separate seat and back are subtle, like Noguchi stones made soft...
During the late '70s and early '80s, office-furniture manufacturers scrambled to get Ergon knockoffs on the market. "Ergonomics went down the tube," says Stumpf, "when it became just a marketing buzz word." Stumpf, meanwhile, carried on his experiments. He had built twelve prototypes for the Ergon; for the Equa, designed in collaboration with Don Chadwick, there were 27. Before Equa, there were two kinds of office chairs: seat and back could be separate, as in Ergon, or they could be one solid shell. Stumpf and Chadwick found a new material (Du Pont's Rynite, a reinforced fiber glass...
...supply. After 14 years of output growth, the nation's spare capacity has been used up: there are shortages of skilled workers in a number of industries, particularly construction, and the price of raw materials and wages is rising. For instance, in Queensland electrical workers at Energex and Ergon secured a 31% pay rise over three years. Unless spending slows, inflationary pressures can spread across the economy, inviting a harsher interest-rate response, and lower rates of growth - a waste of potential and income the community is unlikely to accept. Over time, so-called microeconomic reforms can improve the nation...
...term comes from the Greek words for work (ergon) and law (nomos). It means designing tools and products for the ways in which people move and think, rather than forcing people to adapt to them. The intent is to reduce eyestrain, backaches and muscle cramps...