From Safety to Safety Science

Time travel

‘Rarely is a problem unique. You can usually find something in past experience to offer some clue to the future’. The quote is from Heinrich and his co-author, Lateiner, in a book published seven years after Heinrich’s death (Lateiner and Heinrich 1969). To honour this quote, this paragraph starts with a journey of a hypothetical time traveller coming from the second part of the nineteenth century to today’s world.

Safety promotion exhibitions began in European countries and in the United States in the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Visitors to these exhibitions would have gazed at technical devices such as protective coverings on moving parts, like rotating cogwheels, and spinning fans, for extracting ...