Many of us spend our workdays sitting in an office chair. If we’re lucky, it’s a comfortable experience.
Believe it or not, we have Charles Darwin to (partially) thank for this. To better access his specimen collection, the famed British naturalist modified his armchair by replacing its legs with wheeled legs taken from his bed, thus creating one of the world’s earliest office chairs. Prior to the 1850s, desk chairs had featured straight backs and rigid seats. Darwin wanted to be able to move around his workspace without having to stand up every time.
As the need for office work grew in the 19th century, other inventors created chairs that would accommodate the long hours spent by clerks, bookkeepers, and other administrative employees at their desks. Notably, Thomas E. Warren introduced his Centripetal Spring Chair to the world in 1849. If you look past the ornate cast iron frame and upholstered velvet cushion, this chair was surprisingly similar to a modern office chair, with caster wheels, a headrest, armrests, tilting movement, and a revolving seat. Manufactured by the American Chair Company and launched at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, it became the first mass-produced office chair.
In the early 20th century, designers began emphasizing the appearance of their office chairs, and many new models were created. Famously, in 1904, architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Larkin Building Chair, intended to align architecturally with the building in which it was used. Though it doesn’t offer lumbar support or adjustable backrests and armrests, many consider it the precursor to the modern ergonomic office chair thanks to a mechanism for adjusting seat height.
In more recent decades, office chairs have been built with comfort in mind, with innovative technologies facilitating chairs designed to reduce physical stress and strain. Introduced in 1976, Bill Stumpf’s Ergon office chair featured molded foam to support the natural sitting position, as well as gas-lift levers for raising, lowering, and tilting. The world’s first automatically adjustable office chair, the “Vertebra,” was also introduced during the 1970s, designed by Emilio Ambasz and Giancarlo Piretti.
Take a seat:
