Mosso Ergograph

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The Mosso Ergograph is a machine designed to find a body’s individual optimum stage of muscular performance (Bergstrom, 271-271). It is a machine that allowed for the testing of many complex variables and their effects on muscular strength, such as a lack of food, sleep, forced marches, mental fatigue, and the effect of substances such as coffee, sugar, and even emotional affect (Bergstrom, 273-274).


Precursors – dynamometer, myrograph

   The dynanometer stands as the motor-sensory predecessor to the ergograph in that it was used to determine the maximum force of a muscle or to compare movements of the same estimated force. James Baldwin describes it in his Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, a device that can be compressed or pulled apart in the sides and the amount of force exerted in either case is indicated on scales by a pointer to measure the highest point reached.Baldwin, 607  Mosso criticizes the use of dynanometers for measuring muscular force by saying they did not produce constant indications, a criticism that also applies to his own research on the subject. The issue Mosso found with the dynanometer was that fatigue could not be isolated in one muscle alone, once one muscle is fatigued other muscles take on a greater role in the movement. fatigue 83  
   The myrograph designed by Hermann von Helmholtz is the direct, mediatic predecessor as it included the graphing of sensory input. The device, created in 1872, addressed the nature of the nervous current by recording the contraction of the muscles extracted from frog's legs (Mosso, 76). fatigue, 76 This was a device that allowed for the measured recording of muscular work that our senses would be too slow to grasp.