JF Ptak Science Books Post 1966
See also Cyborgs and Robots Man as Machine and Machine as Man
Some images are sleepily iconic, instantly recognizable, symbols of something bigger than themselves. This is the case with the photographs below–this image of athletic posture makes me think of the development of human-robot (and then robot-human) interaction.
This series of images–which seem to be a celebration of straightness, of flatness in the human body, breathing at right angles–were actually (simply but not-so-simply) displays of physical tests given athletes in France to determine whether they had a higher physical capacity for their sport, identifying (they hoped) those with indelible gifdts that could be squeezed out via medical/physical instrumentation.