Save body movements!

In the 1920s and 30s Accountancy has been affected by many campaigns and “scientific” trends. The story about one of these trends, concerning human physiology , and about the scientific institution that dealt with this issue.

Did you hear anything about cyclography and the Central Labor Institute?

Cyclography - the study of the sequence of movements performed by a person through their photographing. From the beginning of the last century, the method was widely advertised: they tried to adapt it to many areas of activity, including accounting.
')
But let's order.

Looking at a person as a mechanical device, the movements of which must be studied and improved, originates ... probably from the work "Man-Machine" (1747) of the French doctor and philosopher Julien Lametrie . This work was very timely translated into Russian - in 1911.

Reference books refer to the names of foreign researchers Marey, Brown and Fisher, who were engaged in cyclography at the end of the 19th century. I can say nothing about the aforementioned: the achievements and recommendations of the cyclography were presented to the national accountants by the Central Labor Institute (CIT) under the leadership of Alexey Kapitonovich Gastev . This happened in the 20s. last century.

This man, Alexey Kapitonovich Gastev, head of CIT, is a very remarkable person:



The biography of Gastev is easy to find on the Web: a professional revolutionary, and in Soviet times a scientific and administrative worker. The main thing is not posts, of course, but energy, which overlaps over the edge in his many books and articles. In short, Alexey Kapitonovich Gastev was a fanatic of the idea of ​​improving the human body and acted in this direction with crushing energy.

The building of the Central Labor Institute (Moscow, Petrovka, 24), headed by Alexey Kapitonovich Gastev. Even then it was clear that CIT and Gastev are inseparable from each other.



And this is the emblem of the scientific laboratories of CIT. Immediately it becomes clear what the essence of the matter. In modern scientific laboratories, such emblems are not representable, in my opinion.





If the direction of the emblem does not reach someone, Cyto slogans were to his services. In the means of visual agitation, it was unambiguously, with young revolutionary enthusiasm, it was reported how physiologically perfect the Soviet person should become. Almost pre-revolutionary Chekhov: in a man everything should be fine ...





About rabid enthusiasm, referred to in the slogan, not at all nonsense: Alexei Kapitonovich Gastev was so mad enthusiasm and forced others to obey.

Please, the employees of CIT on the roof of their establishment study motor culture (others would say, they do industrial gymnastics, but this is someone you like more).



Looking at the smiling girls in the photo, I think: after all, they are smiling not to the fact that they have joined the new motor culture, but to the good weather and the fact that the authorities have driven everyone to fresh air, where they are forced to rotate under the camera. Go bad, instead of boring work on typewriters! It seems to me that scientific ideas perish because of just such indifferent ideas of young girls - because of the indifference of ordinary performers who are ready to do anything: motor culture or meaningless shifting papers from table to table, just to give bread rations.

Plans for A.K. Gastev - to transfer the whole country to the rails of improved physiology - was grandiose, and the actions were energetic: from similar research institutes the Central Labor Institute was the largest and most influential institution.

In the specialized shop located in the building of CIT, literature on labor organization was on sale.





The main thing is not the literature, of course, but the training of specialists and the application of the principles of labor developed at CIT.
The Central Labor Institute had its own instructors - as they would say now, their representative offices - throughout the USSR.



Instructors engaged in the implementation of advanced labor practices in thousands of enterprises. Advanced methods were understood to be professional skills training with an emphasis on streamlining movements. The breadth of the specialties, which were offered to teach, can be judged by this advertisement:



Please note: the training of secretaries, clerks, cashiers and typists has been put into development. The work of clerical workers was supposed to be improved along with the labor of representatives of working specialties — as we can see, the problems of clerical work were not alien to the figures of the Central Labor Institute. Of course, clerical work was not in the first place: what is the office there, when the industry that is standing up calls for help! The country is young and huge - imagine how many irrational production movements have to be eliminated in the struggle for productivity.

The Central Institute helped the national economy with what it could, and did not hesitate to publicly declare its successes.



International activities have also taken place, and not without success.

In 1924, the Soviet delegation participated in the Prague Congress on HOT. I have even interesting pictures on this score.

Exhibits of the Central Labor Institute at the Prague Congress:



Soviet delegation at the Prague Congress. Sit (from left to right): A.K. Gastev (CIT), E.F. Rozmirovich (NKRKI - People's Commissariat of Workers 'and Peasants' Inspection), I.N. Spielrein (Laboratory of Industrial Psychotechnics, NKT - Labor Commissariat). Standing (from left to right): the representative of Germany Dr. Pjorkovsky, N.A. Bernstein (CIT), A.S. Labutin (CIT).



Pay attention to Elena Fedorovna Rozmirovich . In 1924, she was a representative of the NKRKI, but after two years she will head the Institute of Engineering Management (ITU), which will solve approximately the same rationalization tasks as the Central Labor Institute. So, Rozmirovich’s participation in the Prague Congress is not by chance.

By the way, ITU had an undoubtedly more beneficial effect on CIT than ITT: not by its scientific activities, but by the presence of a publishing house that regularly published accounting literature.



But with scientific activities, despite the abundance of research organizations in the USSR, the situation was bad, at least at first.

One of my favorite photos. Although not directly related to cyclography, it is very indicative. What do you think the picture shows?



It depicts a scientific experiment conducted in the courtyard of the Institute for Occupational Safety (there was such a research institution in the USSR). The experiment was aimed at finding out the influence of weights on the female body. The subjects carry the weight, while breathing into the bags (to subsequently analyze the composition of exhaled gases, as I understand it). It is possible that experiments on medicine and physiology should be carried out, but I cannot perceive this photo differently than the comic one.

However, let us return to the Prague Congress and the Soviet delegation at it.

Another remarkable personality is Isaak Naftulievich Spielrein , head of the laboratory of industrial psychotechnics at the People's Commissariat of Labor.

And a man with a beard as if stuck to his face was Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bernstein , the head of the laboratory of biomechanics of CIT, the inventor of the cyclographic apparatus based on a camera, a man who is considered one of the main authorities in the field of cyclography. Gastev was the head of a research institution, and Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bernshtein was his chief specialist in cyclography.

So what is cyclography itself, what did it represent?

As I said, photographing a sequence of human movements. I took a camera or a movie camera, took pictures of the object at regular intervals. Sometimes a rotating disk with windows was used to set the intervals - so I understood the image of the device I had.



The result was an intermittent motion image, approximately like this:



It seems that such photography was called chronophotography , and the images - called chronophotograms. And the cyclography itself was performed differently, in complete darkness: light bulbs were attached to the body of the subject, the subject moved, the movements of the subject were taken on camera.



Here the light bulb is attached to the arm: presumably, the movements of the arm are investigated when writing the text.



The photographs - cyclograms - were visible light trails from light bulbs, indicating perfect movements:



Following the light trails, it was possible to reconstruct the movements of a person, as shown in the collage below. In the photo - TsITA director Alexey Kaptonovich Gastev demonstrates movements when working with a chisel.



Light traces could be transferred to the plane, transforming into something like a graphic:



Another, more advanced method was also practiced: transforming with a wire into a three-dimensional model.



How did cyclographic images modernize office work, including accounting? They tried to save the movements of clerical workers, because it was in this - in the economy of movements and due to this better organization of work - the initial idea consisted.

The worker does not work on the conveyor, and at the desk? What's the difference?! Let's organize the desk so that the clerk performs as few movements as possible: then, without a doubt, his productivity will increase.

I will not vouch for the increase in productivity, but the arrangement of the pens on the desktops was thought out to the smallest detail, based on human physiology!



As a result, we received a rationally organized workplace: a clerk, secretary, typists, and an accountant.

Here is a rationally organized workplace of the stockman, who makes up the product reports:



A rather strange workplace: on the left hand of an employee there is a card index - everything is clear here, and on the right hand there are some ringlets. I suppose the gum, which serves to overturn the commodity reports, as shown in the photo. But why it was necessary to put commodity reports in narrow strips, I do not understand this, for the first time I come across this method of storing papers. Not easier to put paper sheets in folders, as always done?

Another rationally organized office space is in the Taylor system ( Frederick Taylor , died in 1915):



In our country, similar rationalization of CIT, led by Alexei Kapitonovich Gastev, was engaged in, and in America - other offices and other figures more internationally recognized, in particular, Henry Ford (with whom Gastev was in personal correspondence). Powerful such industrial rationalization movements: Taylorism, Fordism. Although the scientific problem was solved the same: to organize the workplace correctly, to build an optimal schedule of production movements in the factory territory or individual rooms.

Not only the movements of individual workers were optimized, entire route maps were compiled:



Warehouse organization before and after rationalization:



Now saving body movements in the past, at least as a public campaign.

What remains of those years of spirit-lifting years? After Henry Ford - the famous Ford conveyor belt (which is not surprising, because Ford solved the production tasks in the first place). And what remained from the scientific activity of Alexey Kapitonovich Gastev?

I do not know. That is, I can not judge the industry (for the industry of HOT - a great blessing, no doubt), and the accounting track of Gastev and the Central Institute of Labor headed by him is imperceptible. Reforming accounting by rearranging desks is perhaps a worthy task, but not the most promising.

At the same time, my opinion about Alexey Kapitonovich Gastev is more positive than negative. Yes, I did not achieve any visible success in rationalization of the office, the cyclography was not demanded by the accounting department, but there are so many charisma and charisma! And the unbridled desire to do something necessary and useful for the country, which was probably not observed among pretty girls, by order of the head of physical exercises on the roof of the Central Institute of Labor.

What Gastev wasn’t worthy of was the execution in 1939. Still, the Soviet power turned out to be incredibly bastard, allowing itself to destroy such people: not even enemies, but true sons, who created the Soviet power itself. I will never believe that a former revolutionary, a rationalization fanatic, and a prolific writer have done something so unseemly! Or maybe he began to understand that for the implementation of his ideas the Soviets are not the best political system? No, it is unlikely: after all, Aleksey Kapitonovich was the director of the largest research institution, in the early 1930s he turned around very widely, a sin to complain. Slandered or blurted out too much ...

Another participant of the Prague Congress, I.N. Spielreina, also shot, two years before Gastev.

The fate of E.F. Rozmirovich and N.A. Bernstein has developed happier.

Elena Fyodorovna Rozmirovich, after managing the Institute of Technological Engineering, held other senior positions, was even the director of the Gorky State Library IN AND. Lenin.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bernshtein, head of the Tsitovsky laboratory of biomechanics, in 1925, shortly after the Prague Congress, moved from the Central Labor Institute to scientific and medical institutions, where he continued to deal with the same subject matter - the physiology of movements. In the medical field, he succeeded more, especially since the war broke out, and thousands of wounded people needed to restore the movements of injured limbs. Here, the biomechanics of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bernshtein came in handy: the author of the method even received the Stalin Prize for 1947, and later his achievements were used in robotics.

The rationalization of the movements of the clerks and the correct arrangement of the tables in the accounting departments after the war were no longer talked about.

Summary : there is little to be a fanatic of the case and little to invent, you still need to understand in which area to apply the invention.