Ritchie, Malcolm L.

Malcolm L. Ritchie is an expert on Engineering and Professional Psychology. He entered Texas Tech as an Engineering Student during the 1940-41 term. He earned his A.A. in 1947 from Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa. In 1948, Dr. Ritchie earned his B.A. in Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1951 he earned his MA in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1953 he earned his PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana. Dr. Ritchie was awarded an honorary Doctorate. Humane Letters from Graceland University in 2008.

Malcolm Ritchie grew up in Breckenridge, Texas, and studied engineering for one year at Texas Tech before entering Army flight training in 1941. He was a night fighter pilot in the Pacific theater during World War II, and following the war became a Graceland student in January of 1946. At Graceland he met fellow student Roberta Ann Gossadge and they were married in 1947. They continued their education together. They had three children: Karen Sue, Jennifer Kay, and William George. He continued studies at the University of California in Berkeley from 1947 to 1949, before joining the Graceland faculty. In 1951 he resumed graduate study at the University of Illinois in the new field of engineering psychology, earning the Ph.D. in 1953 and continuing on the University's research staff until 1957. He formed Ritchie Inc. in 1957 to do research and consulting on the control of machines by human operators. In that role he played a part in the development of the first three U.S. manned space vehicles.

In 1969 he became Professor of Engineering at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, where he established a Human Factors Engineering degree program combining control system engineering and experimental psychology. He is now Emeritus Professor of Engineering and Emeritus Professor of Professional Psychology at Wright State University. He has published about 100 scientific papers and continues consulting on the design of machines for human control. He is a Fellow of the Human Factors Society of the American Psychological Society, and is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

He served on the Graceland College Board of Trustees from 1964 to 1976. All three of his children are graduates of Graceland, and his oldest granddaughter is now a freshman. He holds the priesthood office of patriarch in the RLDS Church. (Ritchie, Malcolm L., Roy Cheville : The Graceland College Years, Center for Christian Leadership, Lamoni, Iowa, 1995. Back cover)

Dr. Ritchie's first career activity was that of military and civilian pilot, in which he accumulated 4,000 hours of flight time. Since earning his PhD in 1953, he has been actively involved in research on human performance and in the design of human controlled systems. He has been an innovator in research on the nature of complex displays, and has been a leader in establishing the concept of human factors system engineering.

In 1951 he began research at the University of Illinois on air traffic control and on aircraft flight instrumentation. From 1953 to 1957 he headed a research team of the University of Illinois establishing the use of simulators for evaluation of aircraft instrument concepts at Wright Patterson AFB. He flew University aircraft regularly for research and administrative purposes. In that period he produced such papers as "Psychological Aspects of Cockpit Design," and "Integrated Instruments: A Roll and Turn Indicator."

From 1957 to 1969, as President of Ritchie Inc., he supervised as many as 41 employees in research and consultation on a variety of manned aircraft and spacecraft projects. For 7 years he was a major subcontractor to Lear Siegler establishing such cockpit concepts as the "pilot manager", and a number of control-display integration approaches. He managed a number of prime contracts with the Flight Dynamics Laboratory dealing with cockpit control-display concepts. He owned and operated a twin-engine aircraft equipped as a flying test bed for instrumentation concepts. He developed an instrumented automobile for research on the role of certain information inputs in automobile driving. He participated in the preliminary design of the Mercury and Apollo space vehicles as a subcontractor to General Electric's Missile and Space Vehicle Department. His publications during this period include "Cockpit Control-Display Subsystem Engineering", "Quickening and Damping and Aircraft Instrument Display", "What Constitutes Cockpit Simplification and When is it Desirable?," and "A Study of the relationship between forward velocity and lateral acceleration in curves during normal driving".

From 1969 to 1982, as Professor of Engineering at Wright State University, he established the academic field of mind-machine system engineering by originating a unique academic program producing graduates with formal competence in systems engineering and in experimental psychology. From 1974 to 1993 he was a consultant to the Division Advisory Group of the USAF Aeronautical Systems Division. He was a consultant to General Electric on design proposals for an Army helicopter, to Bendix on controls and displays for microwave landing, subcontractor to Rockwell North American on cockpit displays for their forward swept wing fighter proposal, and subcontractor to Canyon Research at Fort Rucker on methods of detailing helicopter flight operations for purposes of quantifying pilot performance. His publications in this period include "Beyond Linear Perspective with Computer Generated Displays", "Using Computer Generated Displays for Research on Synthesized Displays", "Toward a Pictorial Revolution in Complex Displays for Vehicle Control", "Object, Illusion, and Frame of Reference as Design Criteria for Computer Generated Displays", "A Conceptual Model of the Engineering Design Process", "The Research and Development Methods of Wilbur and Orville Wright", and "Choice of Speed in Driving Through Curves as a Function of Advisory Speed and Curve Signs."

From July 1980 to July 1982, under contract between the Federal Aviation Administration and Wright State University, Dr. Ritchie spent full time as Special advisor for Human Factors System Engineering to the Director of the FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City, N.J. One of the projects during that time was to develop a graduate educational program in aviation human factors engineering to upgrade the capabilities of personnel in Atlantic City. This program was anchored in a formal academic venture initiated by the University of Pennsylvania. He continued as consultant to the USAF Aeronautical Systems Division's Division Advisory Group.

From 1982 to 1985, as President of Ritchie Inc. and Emeritus Professor of Engineering, he was a consultant to the Director of the FAA Technical Center, to the FAA Associate Administrator for Flight Standards, and FAA Director of Operational Test and Evaluation. Publications in this period include "Mind Over Machine in Navigation and Air Traffic Control".

From 1985 to 1993, with Midwest Systems Research, Inc. he was involved in guiding technical programs and staff development for contract research on aircraft controls and displays for the USAF and the FAA. He wrote a chapter on General Aviation for the book, Human Factors in Aviation, which was published in July 1988 by Academic Press. He continued as advisor to the USAF Aeronautical Systems Division's Division Advisory Group from 1974 to 1993. From 1989 to 1991 he was a Committee Member of the National Research Council's Air Force Studies Board. In 1990 he was a member of the FAA Scientific Task Planning Group developing a National Plan for Aviation Human Factors.

About 1970 he began serving as an expert witness in legal cases dealing with the relations between humans and machines. He has been involved in about 20 cases, given perhaps 18 depositions, and testified twice in court. The representation has been about evenly divided between plaintiff and defendant. These cases have involved automobile accidents, aircraft accidents, machine guarding, contact with electrical wires, labels, and highway signs. Dr. Ritchie's expertise is in the design of those portions of the machine system which have a bearing on human performance. (MS-390 Dr. Malcolm L. Ritchie Collection Box 1 File 3 Resume)

In 2013 he was superannuated in the local branch of the Community of Christ as a lay priesthood member for 60 years. He had been ordained a Priest in 1948, and Elder in 1953, a High Priest in 1964 and a Patriarch-Evangelist in 1973. He received a number of messages from fellow members on that occasion. A complete listing of Dr. Ritchie's publications, papers, subcontracts, consulting, and prime contracts are listed on pages 3-6 of his resume.

From the guide to the Dr. Malcolm L. Ritchie Collection, 1949-2006, 1960-1970, (Wright State University, Special Collections and Archives)