Word: tichauer
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Easy solutions to the ramifying problems of a technological age leap almost unbidden into Tichauer's mind, for he is both an inventive and a lazy man. His first impulse is to find an easier way to do anything. This ambition, together with a heartfelt concern for the physical vulnerability of man, has led him into a new and little-known discipline. Tichauer is a biomechanist: a scientist who is half-anatomist and half-engineer, and who seeks to improve the fit between man and machine. Under the prodding of human engineers like Tichauer, technology is beginning to accept...
Human Limitation. As obvious as this fact may be, says Tichauer, industrial society has long overlooked it. Basic tools were reproduced in traditional shapes mainly out of habit. Well into the 20th century, more complicated machines were designed without any serious consideration for the limitations of their human operators-in part, at least, because scarcely anyone understood what those limitations were. Biomechanics, Tichauer notes with satisfaction, is beginning to change all that...
...addition to teaching at N.Y.U., Tichauer is a well-known industrial consultant with more commissions and clients (among them: Western Electric, Texas Instruments, Caterpillar Tractor) than he can possibly handle. "I'm sort of an industrial 'Dear Abby,' " he says. "They come to me only when there's a mess." One such distress call came from Western Electric in Kansas City, which was having trouble with a certain production line. Working with the staff engineers, Tichauer evolved a pair of pliers with a 30° bend in the handle. As a result of this consideration...
...Some of Tichauer's troubleshooting solutions involve not tools but a basic understanding of the body's internal machinery. At one factory where workers were complaining of headaches, Tichauer traced the cause to the machines they operated, which were transmitting vibrations of 18 cycles a second. After adoption of his proposal to base the machines on a cushion of neoprene, the vibrations and the headaches disappeared. At another plant, he reduced a near-epidemic of severe chest pains by raising the workers' chairs and modifying the seating angle. Much too low in relation to the work level...
...Born in Berlin 51 years ago, Tichauer indulged a youthful interest in anatomical engineering by watching brewery horses pull their heavy load up the city's slopes. The lithe movements of the big cats, pacing their cages at Berlin's Tiergarten, riveted his attention for hours on end. Studying the exhibit on paleolithic man at the Museum fur Völkerkunde, he pondered the relationship between that brawny prehistoric arm and the stone ax it brandished at onlookers. After earning degrees in science and mechanical engineering, Tichauer decided to investigate for himself...