Desk

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Desk

A desk is a furniture

Furniture

Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects which may support the human body , provide storage, or hold objects on horizontal surfaces above the ground....
form and a class of table

Table (furniture)

A table is a item of furniture comprising a surface supported by a base or legs. It may be used to hold articles such as food at a convenient or comfortable height when sitting, and is therefore often used in conjunction with chairs....
often used in a work or office

Office

An office is generally a room or other area in which people employment, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty....
setting for reading or writing

Writing

Writing is the representation of language in a textual Media through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and the recording of language via a non-textual medium such as Magnetic tape sound recording....
on or using a computer

Computer

A computer is a machine that manipulates Data according to a list of Code .The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century , although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed earlier....
. Desks often have one or more drawers to store office supplies and papers. Unlike a regular table, usually only one side of a desk is suitable to sit on (though there are some unusual exceptions, such as a partners desk

Partners desk

A partners desk is an antique desk form which is basically two pedestal desks constructed from the start as one big desk joined at the front, for two users working while facing each other....
). Not all desks have the form of a table. For instance, an Armoire desk

Armoire desk

An armoire desk is a writing-table built within a large cabinet, usually 1.5-2.0 m high. The cabinet is closed by two to four full-height doors, to keep out dust or to give a tidy appearance to a room by hiding the cluttered working surface of the desk....
is a desk built within a large wardrobe-like cabinet, and a portable desk

Portable desk

The portable desk has not one but many forms. In a sense, the portable desk is a long-lost ancestor of the portable computer, and the modern laptop could be considered an atavistic grandchild of the 19th-century Lap desk....
is light enough to be placed on a person's lap.

-style furniture appears not to have been used in classical antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome....
or in other ancient centers of civilization in the Middle East

Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
or Far East

Far East

The Far East is a term current in English language to refer to the countries of East Asia. The term is often expanded to also include Southeast Asia and South Asia, for economic and cultural reasons, for example because Buddhism is common to East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia....
, but there is no specific proof.

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Encyclopedia

A desk is a furniture

Furniture

Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects which may support the human body , provide storage, or hold objects on horizontal surfaces above the ground....
form and a class of table

Table (furniture)

Office

Writing

Computer

Partners desk

Armoire desk

Portable desk

Early desks

Desk-style furniture appears not to have been used in classical antiquity

Classical antiquity

Middle East

Far East

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
illustrations show the first pieces of furniture which seem to have been designed and constructed for reading and writing.

Before the invention of the movable type printing press

Printing press

A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium , thereby transferring an image. The mechanical systems involved were first assembled in Germany by the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg around 1439, based on existing screw-presses used to press cloth, grapes etc., and possibly to print wood...
in the 15th century, any reader was potentially a writer or publisher or both, since any book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side....
or other document

Document

A document is a bounded physical representation of body of information designed with the capacity to communication. A document may manifest symbolic, diagrammatic or sensory-representational information....
had to be copied by hand. The desks were designed with slots and hooks for bookmark

Bookmark

A bookmark is used to keep one's place in a printed work. It can also refer to:* Internet bookmark, a pointer in an Internet Web browser* a marker of one's place in an electronic document...
s and for writing implements. Since manuscript volumes were sometimes large, and heavy, desks of the period usually had massive structures.

Desks of the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
and later eras had relatively slimmer structures, and more and more drawers as woodworking

Woodworking

Woodworking is the process of building, making or carving something using wood....
became more precise and cabinet-making became a distinct trade. It is often possible to find out if a table or other piece of furniture of those times was designed to be used as a desk by looking for a drawer with three small separations (one each for the ink pot, the blotter

Blotting paper

Blotting paper is a type of paper or other material which is used to absorb an excess of substance from the surface of an Object .Examples of its use include absorbing the excess ink left on parchment after writing with a fountain pen, removal of excess lipstick or facial oils in Cosmetics, or removal of excess dye after staining....
and the powder tray) and room for the pen

Pen

File:03-BICcristal2008-03-26.jpgA pen is a writing instrument used to apply ink to a surface, usually paper. There are several different types, including ballpoint pen, rollerball pen, fountain pen, felt-tip....
s.

The desk forms we are familiar with in this beginning of the millennium were born mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The ergonomic desk of the last decades is the newest addition to a long list of desk forms, but in a way it is only a refinement of the mechanically complex drawing table or drafting table of the end of the 18th century.

Industrial era

Refinements to those first desk forms were considerable through the 19th century, as steam-driven machinery made cheap wood-based paper possible in the last periods of the first phase of the industrial revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, production, and transportation had a profound effect on the socioeconomics and cultural conditions in United Kingdom....
. This produced a boom in the number of, or some might say the birth of, the white-collar worker

White-collar worker

The term white-collar worker refers to a salaried professional or an educated worker who performs semi-professional office, administrative, and sales coordination tasks, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor....
. As these office workers grew in number, desks were mass-produced

Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines. The concepts of mass production are applied to various kinds of products, from fluids and particulates handled in bulk to discrete solid parts to assemblies of such parts ....
for them in large quantities, using newer, steam-driven woodworking machinery. This was the first sharp division in desk manufacturing. From then on, limited quantities of finely crafted desks have been constructed by master cabinetmakers for the homes and offices of the rich while the vast majority of desks were assembled rapidly by unskilled labor, from components turned out in batches by machine tools. Thus, age alone does not guarantee that an antique desk is a masterpiece, since this shift took place more than a hundred years ago.

More paper and more correspondence drove the need for more complex desks and more specialized desks, such as the rolltop desk

Rolltop desk

A rolltop desk is a 19th century reworking of the pedestal desk with, in addition, a series of stacked compartments, shelves, drawers and nooks in front of the user, much like the Bureau a gradin or the Carlton house desk....
which was a mass produced, slatted variant of the classical cylinder desk

Cylinder desk

The cylinder desk is a form of desk which resembles a Bureau Mazarin or a writing table equipped with small stacked shelves in front of the user's main work surface, and a revolving cylinder part which comes down to hide and lock up the working papers when the day is done....
. It provided a relatively fast and cheap way to lock up the ever increasing flow of paper without having to file everything by the end of the day. Paper documents started leaving the desk as a "home," with the general introduction of filing cabinet

Filing cabinet

A filing cabinet is a piece of office furniture usually used to store paper documents in file folders. In the most simple sense, it is an enclosure for drawers in which items are stored....
s. Correspondence and other documents were now too numerous to get enough attention to be rolled up or folded again, then summarized and tagged before being pigeonhole

Pigeonhole

Pigeonhole may refer to:*Pigeonholes, nesting spaces formed in a dovecote *Pigeonhole, one of the boxes in a pigeon coop*Pigeonhole principle, a mathematical principle...
d in a small compartment over or under the work surface of the desk. The famous Wooton desk

Wooton desk

The Wooton desk is a variation of the Fall front desk. It is the embodiment of the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption which swept over moneyed society in the United States at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and was described by Thorstein Veblen in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class....
and others were the last manifestations of the "pigeonhole" style. The newer desks could be transformed into many different shapes and angles and were ideal for artists.

Steel desks

A smaller boom in office work and desk production occurred at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th with the introduction of smaller and cheaper electrical presses and efficient carbon paper

Carbon paper

Carbon paper is paper coated on one side with a layer of a loosely bound dry ink or pigmented coating, usually bound with wax. It is used for making one or more copies simultaneous with the creation of an original document....
s coupled with the general acceptance of the typewriter

Typewriter

A typewriter is a Machine or electromechanical device with a set of "keys" that, when pressed, cause Typeface to be printed on a medium, usually paper....
. Steel desks were introduced to take heavier loads of paper and withstand the pounding meted out on the typewriters. The L-shaped desk became popular, with the "leg" being used as an annex for the typewriter.

Another big boom occurred after the Second World War with the spread of photocopying. Paperwork drove even higher the number of desk workers, whose work surface diminished in size as office rents rose, and the paper itself was moved more and more directly to filing cabinets or sent to records management centers, or transformed into microfilm, or both. Modular desks seating several co-workers close by became common. Even executive or management desks became mass-produced, built of cheap plywood

Plywood

Sorry, no overview for this topic
or fiberboard covered with wood veneer, as the number of persons managing the white collar workers became even greater.

Student desks

A student desk can be any desk form meant for use by a student. Usually the term designates a small pedestal desk

Pedestal desk

A pedestal desk is usually a large free-standing desk made of a simple rectangular working surface resting on two Column or small cabinet of stacked drawers of one or two sizes, with plinths around the bases....
or writing table

Writing table

A writing table has a series of drawers directly under the surface of the table, to contain writing implements, so that it may serve as a desk....
constructed for use by a teenager or a pre-teen in his or her room at home. More often than not it is a pedestal desk, with only one of the two pedestals and about two thirds of the desk surface. Such desks are sometimes called left pedestal desks or right pedestal desks depending on the position of the single pedestal. The height of the desk is usually a bit lower than is the case for normal adult desks. In some cases, the desk is connected from the seat to the table. The table is also used for sitting before classes.

The desks are usually mass-produced in steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy consisting mostly of iron, with a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.14% by weight , depending on grade. Carbon is the most cost-effective alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten....
or wood

Wood

Wood is an organic material; in the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of woody plants, notably trees but also shrubs, etc....
and sold on the consumer market. In addition there is a wide variety of plans available for woodworking

Woodworking

Woodworking is the process of building, making or carving something using wood....
enthusiasts. There are many novel forms of student desks made to maximize the relatively restricted area available in a child's room. One of the most common is the bunk bed desk, also known as a loft bed.

Impact of computers

Until the late 1980s desks remained a place for paperwork and business negotiation.

At the end of this decade though the personal computer was taking hold in large and medium sized businesses. New office suites included a "knee hole" credenza which was a place for a terminal or personal computer and keyboard tray. Soon new office designs also included "U-shape" suites which added a bridge worksurface between the back credenza and front desk. During the North American recession of the early 1990s, many manager and executive workers had to do word processing and other functions previously completed by typing pools and secretaries. This necessitated a more central placement of the computer on these "U-shape" suite desk systems.

With computers abounding, "computer paper" became an office staple. The beginning of this paper boom gave birth to the dream of the "paperless office

Paperless office

Historical perspectiveThe paperless office was a publicist's slogan, meant to describe the office of the future. The basic idea was that office automation would make paper redundant for routine tasks such as record-keeping and bookkeeping....
", in which all information would appear on computer monitors. However, the ease of printing personal documents and the lack of comfort with reading text on computer monitors led to a great deal of document printing. The need for paperwork space vied with the rising desk space taken up by computer monitors, CPUs, printers, scanners, and other peripherals. As well, the need for more space led some desk companies to attach some items to the modesty panel

Modesty panel

A modesty panel is a thin board of wood or metal that is attached to the front of a desk, drafting table, electronic organ, or similar item. It is intended to shield legs, ankles, or feet from view in a variety of circumstances....
at the back of the desk, such as multi-outlets and cabling.

Through the "tech boom" of the 1990s, office worker numbers skyrocketed along with the cost of office space rent. The cubicle desk became widely accepted in North America as an economical way of putting more desk workers in the same space without actually shrinking the size of their working surfaces. The cubicle walls have become new place for workers to affix papers and other items once left on the horizontal desktop surface. Even computer monitor frames themselves are used to attach reminder notes

Post-it note

The Post-it note is a piece of stationery with a re-adherable strip of adhesive on the back, designed for temporarily attaching notes to documents and to other surfaces: walls, desks and table-tops, computer displays, and so forth....
and business card

Business card

Business cards are cards bearing business information about a company or individual. They are shared during formal introductions as a convenience and a memory aid....
s.

Early in the 2000s, private office workers found that their side and back computer-placing furniture made it hard to show the contents of a computer screen to guests or co-workers. Manufacturers have responded to this issue by creating "Forward Facing" desks where computer monitors are placed on the front of the "U-shape" workstation. This forward computer monitor placement promotes a clearer sight-line to greet colleagues, increases computer screen privacy and allows for common viewing of information displayed on a screen.

External links

Real desks

Aronson, Joseph. The Encyclopedia of Furniture. 3rd edition. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1965.
Bedel, Jean. Le grand guide des styles. Paris: Hachette
Hachette (publishing)

Hachette is a large France media group, now a multinational.Originally, Hachette was a bookshop and publishing company set up by Louis Hachette in 1826....
, 1996.
Boyce, Charles. Dictionary of Furniture. New York: Roundtable Press, 1985.
Comstock, Helen. American Furniture: 17th, 18th and 19th century styles. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd. 1997
Duncan, Alastair. Mobilier art déco. Paris: Thames and Hudson, 2000
Forrest, Tim. The Bulfinch Anatomy of Antique Furniture. London: Marshall editions, 1996.
Hewitt, William. View Photos of handmade Wooden desks http://www.williamhewitt.com
Hinckley, F. Lewis. A Directory of Antique Furniture: The Authentic Classification of European and American Designs. New York: Bonanza Books, 1988.
Moser, Thomas. Measured Shop Drawings for American Furniture. New York: Sterling Publlishing Inc., 1985.
Nutting, Wallace. Furniture Treasury. New York: Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers

Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a Private company international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....
, 1963.
Oglesby, Catherine. French provincial decorative art. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons

Charles Scribner's Sons is a New York City publisher that is best known for publishing a number of luminaries of American literature including Ernest Hemingway, F....
, 1951.
Payne, Christopher, Ed. Sotheby's
Sotheby's

Sotheby's is the world's third oldest auction house in continuous operation....
Concise Encyclopedia of Furniture. London: Conran Octopus, 1989.
Pélegrin-Genel, Elisabeth. L'art de vivre au bureau. Paris: Flammarion, 1995.
Reyniès, Nicole de. Le mobilier domestique: Vocabulaire Typologique. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1987.
All authors, all works. Written on a desk, 100-present.

Virtual desktops, GUIs, and the virtual office

Barreau, Deborah K.; Nardi, Bonnie. "Finding and Reminding: File Organization From the desktop". SigChi Bulletin. July 1995. Vol. 27. No. 3. pp. 39-43.
Bederson, Benjamin; Hollan, James D. "Pad++: A Zooming Graphical Interface for Exploring Alternate Interface Physics". in: ACM SIGGRAPH
ACM SIGGRAPH

ACM SIGGRAPH is the New York-based Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques....
and ACM SIGCHI. UIST 94 seventh Annual Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Proceedings of the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership was approximately 83,000 as of 2007....
Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, Marina Del Rey, California, 2 November-4 1994. Boston, ACM Press
Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership was approximately 83,000 as of 2007....
1994. pp. 17-25.
Berger, Warren. "Lost In Space". Wired. Vol. 7 No. 2. Feb. 1999.
Browne, Hilary. Bederson, Benjamin B. Plaisant, Catherine. Druin, Allison. "Designing an Interactive Message Board as a Technology Probe for Family Communication." HCIL online tech report HCIL-2001-20, CS-TR-4284, UMIACS-TR-2001-63 (September 2001) [ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/hcil/Reports-Abstracts-Bibliography/2001-20html/2001-20.htm]
Chou, Paul et alia. BlueSpace: Creating a Personalized and Context-Aware Workspace. IBM
IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational corporation computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, New York, United States....
technical report, 31 October 2001.
Fass, Adam M. Jodi Forlizzi. Randy Pausch
Randy Pausch

Randolph Frederick Pausch was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania....
. "MessyDesk and MessyBoard: Two Designs Inspired By the Goal of Improving Human Memory." Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques. London, England, 25 June-28 2002. pp. 303-311.
Giuiliano, Vincent E. "The Mechanization of Office Work". Scientific American
Scientific American

Scientific American is a popular science science magazine, published since August 28, 1845, making it one of the oldest continuously published magazines in the United States....
. Vol. 247 No. 3. September 1982. pp. 148-164.
Lanier, Jaron. "Virtually There: Three-dimensional tele-immersion may eventually bring the world to your desk". Scientific American
Scientific American

Scientific American is a popular science science magazine, published since August 28, 1845, making it one of the oldest continuously published magazines in the United States....
. April 2001.
Malone, Thomas W. "How do people organize their desks? Implications for the design of Office Information Systems." ACM
Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership was approximately 83,000 as of 2007....
Transactions on Office Information Systems. Vol. 1. No. 1 January 1983. pp 99-112.
Nardi, Bonnie; Barreau, Deborah K. "Finding and Reminding Revisited: Appropriate metaphors for File Organization at the Desktop." SigChi Bulletin. January 1997. Vol. 29. No. 1.
Regenbrecht, Holger and Tetsutari, Nobuzi. "Developing a Generic Augmented Reality
Augmented reality

Augmented reality is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data , where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time....
Interface." Computer, March 2002. Vol.35. No3, pp. 44-50.
Robertson, George G. Maarten van Dantzich. Daniel Robbins. Mary Czerwinski. Ken Hinckley. Kirsten Risden. David Thiel. Vadim Gorokhovsky. "The Task Gallery: A 3D Window Manager." In: CHI 2000: Proceedings of the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership was approximately 83,000 as of 2007....
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, The Hague. 1 April-6 2000. New York: ACM Press
Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership was approximately 83,000 as of 2007....
, 2000. pp. 494-501.

Desk

Early desks

Industrial era

Steel desks

Student desks

Impact of computers

See also

External links

Real desks

Virtual desktops, GUIs, and the virtual office