Squirming Irma testing seats

Background Information of Squirming Irma: "Squirming Irma" is a specially designed testing machine used by American Seating Company to simulate the wear and tear dished out by people to public seating. The business end of the device is a realistically carved wooden form, shaped like a human buttocks, which is activated by a motor. Some one thousand times an hour, the part rolls, twists, slides, shifts and tosses around the seat of the chair like a fidgety sitter, who weighs about 130 pounds.

Sometimes--as shown in the picture--"Irma" is dressed in clothes to test surface wear. One week of this sort of punishment equals what a seat in a theatre, for instance, will get in more than two years of public service.

"Squirming Irma" is just one of a whole group of testing machines which are used by American Seating Company to evaluate the wearing qualities of their products. Thorough testing is a basic policy of the company's Research and Development department, one of the first such departments to be established by American industry.

DAM: LC27518