How to Use the Devices.
The devices of the fatigue museum are useful rather as suggesting devices than as object lessons. If your problem is to enable seated work to be done standing, raise your work-bench to the standing level, and put your work chair on stilts with casters, provided the work is not of a kind that requires a chair against which one can push. If your problem is to enable work that has been done standing to be done sitting, construct a chair that will bring the worker to the desired height. If your problem is to reduce vibration, put springs under the four legs of your chair. If your problem is simply to make sitting work more comfortable, be sure that the chair is of the proper height; that the seat slopes right and has a rounded front edge; and that, if it has a back, it is one that does not interfere with work. If the chair is too high, saw off the legs; if too low, add wooden blocks. Chairs of this type, as actually used by the workers, will usually offer suggestions as to what needs to be done.
In many factories one is astounded to find books, cardboard, cloth, blocks of wood, almost anything heaped in the seat of a chair to make the chair higher. Wherever workers are seated at a work-bench that is not adjustable, look for trouble with the chairs; that is, a tall girl crouching in a kindergarten chair fit only for a child or a dwarf, a short girl balanced on a high stool at a high table, without a proper place to rest the feet. No matter what the height of the table or the chairs, if many workers are seated at the same table, and the chairs are not adjustable, there is field for study. If workers vary much as to height, they should be sorted for height, and sent to tables with adjustable height legs; or, if workers cannot be sorted, the short ones should be provided with platforms to bring their elbows to the right height to fit the table, which should be adjusted to fit the tall workers. If your problem is to make standing work more comfortable, and a chair seems impracticable with the methods used, perhaps a chair or some kind of seat could be provided for rest periods.