Human intervention and full automation in control systems

Much ergonomics research is published in non-archival form, eg, government reports. Sometimes such reports are withheld from general circulation because they are judged to be militarily sensitive. Thus, potentially useful information becomes restricted to a limited number of scientists who are on an initial distribution list. Worse, since the work reported in such papers is not referenced it goes unknown among a large population of workers who have entered the field since the first, limited publication and who have no way of knowing of its existence. Results of experiments carried out some years ago have been rewritten for publication in Applied Ergonomics. The reasons for this are that: (a) the original reports have been regarded as "unclassified" and (b) the substantive problem, the effects of dividing tasks between men and computers in an on-line information system, continues to be of interest to ergonomists and others.