Evolution of the office chair in the 19th century

Office chairs are like shoes, the same thing is that we use a lot of time, it can show your identity and taste, affect your sense of body; The difference is that we can wear different shoes to work, but can only sit in the office chair provided by the boss.

Have you ever suspected that the cause of your back pain is the shape of your office chair, fantasizing that just adjusting it would relieve the pain? Have you ever wondered if plastic office chairs, while ugly, are better than the coffee-stained ones at Starbucks? We can use technology programs to draw a friend thousands of miles away an office chair, but can not give each other the perfect real seat, why the 1980s ergonomics became so hot? If they ever thought about designing the ideal chair?

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The first verifiable seat for human needs appeared in 3000 BC. Although the chair in the picture above is thousands of years older than the first reclining seat in Egypt, this seat, circa 712 BC, gives the idea that a slight reclining would help balance the body.

Drawings and descriptions of the earliest seats in ancient Egypt look the same as today's seats: four legs, a base, and a vertical back. But according to Jenny Pynt and Joy Higgs, around 3000 BC, the seat was adapted to make workers more productive: it had three legs, a concave base, and was tilted slightly forward, seemingly to facilitate the use of a hammer. Together, they published 5000 Years of Seating: From 3000 BC to 2000 AD.

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Over the course of the next few thousand years, there have been many changes in seat, from the throne of a king to the bench of a poor man, some practical, some more ornamental, and a few chairs designed primarily with the physical activity in mind. It was not until around 1850 that a group of American engineers began to research that no matter what posture and movement, the seat could guarantee the health and comfort of the witness. These specially designed seats are called "patent seats" because the designers have patented them.

 

One of the revolutionary designs was Thomas E. Warren's centriped-spring chair, with an iron-cast base and velvet fabric, which could be turned and tilted in any direction and was first shown at the London Fair in 1851.

Jonathan Olivares says the centripetal spring chair has every feature of a modern office chair, except for the adjustable support at the waist. But the seat received negative international feedback because it was so comfortable that it was considered unethical. Jenny Pynt, in her essay "The Patent Seat of the Nineteenth Century," explains that in the Victorian era, standing tall, upright, and not sitting in a chair with a back was considered elegant, willed, and therefore moral.

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Although the "patent seat" was questioned, the late 19th century was the golden age of innovative seat design. Engineers and doctors have used what they know about body movements to create office chairs suitable for jobs such as sewing, surgery, cosmetology, and dentistry. This period saw the evolution of the seat: adjustable backrest tilt and height, and ergonomic features that would not become known until more than 100 years later. "By the 1890s, the barber's chair could be raised, lowered, reclined and rotated." "It wasn't until the mid-20th century that these designs were used for office chairs," Jenny writes.


Post time: Jun-09-2023