Frank and Lillian Gilbreth - Industrial Engineers (the inspiration for the movie Cheaper by the Dozen) "Motion Study in Surgery", Surgery Journal, 1918. See electronic collection of Gilbreth material at Purdue University
Birth of the discipline "human factors engineering" occurs in the aviation world See nice summary at University of Illinois Site
Red Forest Consulting is formed in 2002 to meet demand from industry, academia, non-profits and government agencies for human factors expertise.
Awareness of HFE has grown exponentially. HFE gains a foothold in the medical device industry and health care delivery organizations as they hire or develop in-house HFE expertise.
However, the efforts need to be nurtured and expanded further to widen the gains as patient safety improvements begin to emerge.