History
The history of human factors at the University of Illinois parallels that of the engineering psychology—the science of human behavior in the operation of systems—as a distinct discipline, starting soon after World War II. On January 1, 1946, Alexander Williams, who had served both as a selection and training psychologist and as a naval aviator, opened his Aviation Psychology Laboratory at the University of Illinois. The laboratory’s initial focus on mission analysis and the experimental study of flight display and control design principles soon expanded to pioneering measurement of transfer of pilot training from simulators to airplanes. The laboratory employed the first closed-loop visual system for contact landing simulators and by 1951 world's first air traffic control simulator was used in experimental work. Engineering psychology as a discipline and aviation as its primary field of application were established by publication of the first textbook in the field in 1949, “Applied Experimental Psychology” by Chapanis, Garner, and Morgan.

Williams stayed at Illinois until 1955 and was succeeded by Robert C. Houston for two years and then by Jack A. Adams until 1965. The laboratories of Williams at Illinois, Chapanis at Johns Hopkins, and Fitts at Ohio State were by no means the only ones involved in the engineering psychology field in the 1940s and early '50s, but they were the ones that produced the lion's share of the engineering psychologists during that period. The students of Williams and Fitts invaded the aviation industry in the early 1950s, the golden era of new aircraft development. In 1953, few psychologists hired by airplane and aviation electronics companies had training in engineering psychology and fewer yet had specialized in aviation. The demand for graduates of the universities with aviation programs in industry and military laboratories was therefore high.

During the 1950s, a number of key reports and articles emanating from research done at Illinois addressed not only pilot selection and training deficiencies and perceptual-motor problems encountered by aviators with poorly designed aircraft instrumentation but also flight operations, aircraft maintenance, and air traffic control. These reports helped solidify the crucial role of engineering psychology in aviation systems development and establish the reputation of the University of Illinois as the preeminent research institution in the field. All of the above problem areas have subsequently received serious experimental attention by engineering psychologists both in the United States and abroad. There are now some established principles for the design, maintenance, and operation of complex systems that have application beyond the immediate settings of the individual experiments on which they are based.

- The Adolescence of Engineering Psychology by Stanley N. Roscoe.

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