"...with mathematic precision" - continued...

Of particular importance is that with the ergograph, the results of the measurement no longer need to be read off and then transcribed into tables, rather a diagram is drawn in real time. Bodily functions are transferred into unprecedented images, as they are mechanically created, not painted or drawn. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, graphic interfaces emerge between the body and its numerical values. The method is indebted to the "inscriptions" of Marey (1878, p. VIII, XII) and signifies a break within the history of knowledge in that it signaled the transition from discrete notation to continuous registration (Mosso 1891, p. 104), and also brought about a renewed fusion of image, writing and numbers.

Fatigue Curve, 1890 (detail). Bequest Angelo Mosso (Biblioteca Mosso, Torino)

The use of the ergograph shows how swiftly the interest of research shifted from minimum or maximum force values to the progression or digression of these very values. Just as Marey (1868, pp. 11 f., 93 and 1878, p. VI) used musical notation and Cartesian geometry as a model for his graphical method, Mosso worked towards the registration of temporal phenomena. His main focus lay in intervals of fatigue, those fleeting processes which couple human strength with time. Every ergograph also serves as a chronograph: its diagrams are based on a coordinate system – even when this is accompanied by the fact that time was just as homogenized as it was linearized on the recording cylinder.