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Sunday 1 January 2012

Typewriter Chairs: Back to the Future

Forty years ago, a Business Efficiency Exhibition in Paris unveiled a futuristic vision. It was called a "Secretary's Dream" - the combined typewriter and chair. Organisers said the typewriter chair was "designed to make work a little easier for the secretary of the future". Where did it all go wrong?
But as is usually the case with such things, there was nothing new in this idea.  Fifty years earlier, in 1922, New Yorker Philip Sugerman applied for a patent for this "Combination Furniture" design. Spot the typewriter: it looks like a Rooy!



5 comments:

maschinengeschrieben said...

Spacy. The "writing element" of the electric typewriter resembles of the Millennium Falcon in the Star Wars movies.

Bill M said...

Really nice chair! I want one. Thanks for the space age post.

Richard P said...

Grooooooooooovy. Looks like Roger Dean's idea of an office.

The typewriter has an ergonomic keyboard. I want to know more about it!

Robert Messenger said...

Bill wants one, you want to know more about it. I checked it out, but found nothing about it on the net, I'm afraid. And in this case I DID notice the keyboard. The shape of the typing element is a very interesting observation, too.

Cameron said...

I don't know quite why, but this picture made me laugh out loud.

I suddenly had a vision of this young woman suddenly activating her jet-pack (attached to the bottom of the chair, of course) and taking off into space, typing furiously all the while.