The Psychology Laboratory around 1900

After accepting a position in Zurich in 1897, German experimental psychologist Ernst Meumann (1852–1915) established a psychological laboratory (now the Department of Psychology) where he held lectures starting in 1898. Under his supervision, a wide body of work was compiled in the fields of ergonomics, work rhythm, and the pace of work. In her dissertation Rhythmus und Arbeit (Rhythm and Work, 1900), written under Meumann’s supervision, Margaret Keiver Smith (1846–1945) states that “the rhythmical order itself […] can lead to an exceptionally high degree of fatigue” if the work has to be geared to the pace of a machine: “The well-being of the working individual is sacrificed for an increased amount of labor.” For her experiments she used an ergograph (a device for measuring the work capacity of a muscle), but also tested “purely visual learning” to ascertain the role of rhythm in intellectual work. The methods in experimental psychology developed by Meumann were of particular significance for the education reform movement of that time.

Source: University of Zurich Archives