Citation

Kent AFS. J. Physiol. 1916; 50(Suppl): lv-lvi.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1916, The Physiological Society, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1113/jphysiol.1916.sp001780

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Workers are often less efficient on Monday than on other days of the matter of experience. The fact has been regarded as a result of a misuse of the weekend leisure and of the week's wages. The weekends rest affects both fatigue production and recovery from fatigue on the one hand, and output on the other. Not only is there a feeling of vicissitude in this inclination to work, but also diminished efficiency when work is attempted. The phenomenon may be observed in industrial occupations, and also occupations other than those usually carried on in factories. In typewriting, for instance, in writing shorthand, and in dating, full efficiency after the rest is only came as a result of some minutes practice, the amount of practice necessary bearing some relation to the link of the previous rest. The process recalls the familiar behavior of muscle, which, after rest, shows the progressive improvement as a result of activity, the initial contractions being somewhat smaller than those which follow, and the first being off in the smallest of the series.... Thus, the evidence points to the real cause of efficient work on Monday, and in the first working period of any particular day, being traceable, not to any injurious influence acting on the worker, but rather to an abstention from work, resulting in operations, which- as a result of practice- are ordinarily performed quickly and well, being somewhat forgotten and to that extent to be re-learnt before the old efficiency can be regained. It is, in fact, a matter of loss of coordination rather than actual fatigue.

Cited in: Burnham JC (2009). Accident Prone: A history of technology, psychology, and misfits of the machine age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-08117-5. The book was favorably reviewed by David Hemenway in Injury Prevention (2011), doi: 10.1136/ip.2011.031658.



Special Thanks to Dr. Burnham for providing an electronic copy of the bibliographic notes that accompany each chapter. This greatly facilitated adding previously unidentified records to the SafetyLit database. SafetyLit users may obtain a listing of the book's references by searching using the following Textword(s) Exact query: "Burnham-Accident-Prone".

Language: en