American psychologist Knight Dunlap’s early pursuit test, featuring electrically sensitive pins, a rheostat for controlling an amp-meter, and a foot pedal that offsets a table-mounted motor, as pictured in the United States War Department’s Air Service Medical (1919)
Featured on PDR in the essay Cybernetic Attention: All Watched over by Machines We Learned to Watch
Before the attention economy consumed our lives, “pursuit tests” devised by the US military coupled man to machine with the aim of assessing focus under pressure. D. Graham Burnett explores these devices for evaluating aviators, finding a pre-history of the laboratory research that has relentlessly worked to slice and dice the attentional powers of human beings.
Also appearing in the essay…
American psychologist Knight Dunlap’s early pursuit test
Date
1919
From
Air Service Medical
Image Size
1848 x 2640