Now I Sit Me Down (23 page)

The little duke, who died before his tenth birthday, did not get much use from this magical contraption.

It is difficult to imagine a rotating chair that is also capable of rising to a height of five feet, but the reference to a “worm-screw” makes Oeben's mechanical chair sound like the invalid's chair invented a hundred years earlier by Nicolas Grollier de Servière, a military engineer. Grollier had a “cabinet of curiosities” in his Lyon residence where he displayed working models of his inventions—siege engines, hydraulic machines, surveying instruments, locks, clocks, and windmills. The count was the Leonardo of his day—so famous that no lesser than Louis XIV traveled to Lyon to see the collection. Among the displays was a self-propelled chair with two geared front wheels powered by worm gears turned by hand cranks. By operating one or both of the cranks, the sitter could move the chair backward or forward, this way or that. The mechanical chair was included in a catalogue of Grollier's works published by his grandson in 1719: “very useful for the lame and for those with gout, which can be used to move around a home on one level or in the garden, without anyone's help.” Parisian joiners were soon building self-propelled
fauteuils de malade
, with padded armrests, loose seat cushions, and reclining backrests. Oeben, with his interest in mechanical devices, would undoubtedly have been familiar with such chairs.

Grollier's mechanical chair was introduced to England by John Joseph Merlin, a Belgian-born mathematical-instrument maker and inventor. Merlin opened a private museum in London where he exhibited his inventions: lifelike automatons, ingenious music boxes, complicated timepieces, weigh scales, and mechanical toys. His self-propelled “Gouty Chair” was a direct copy of a
fauteuil de malade
, but Merlin subsequently made an original contribution to the evolution of the wheelchair. He substituted two large push wheels for the hand-cranked front wheels, producing an invalid's chair that could be used out of doors. In addition, he is credited with adding external hoops to the push wheels so that sitters could avoid handling the dirty tires. Often fitted with reclining backs and footrests, “Merlin chairs” were widely used in Britain throughout the nineteenth century and were the forerunners of today's wheelchairs.

Fauteuil de malade
, eighteenth century

The modern collapsible wheelchair was the work of a pair of British mechanical engineers, Herbert Everest and Harry Jennings. Everest had broken his back in a mining accident, and he needed a wheelchair that could be folded and put in the trunk of a car. In 1933, he and his friend Jennings built a chair that used lightweight tubular steel, a canvas seat and back, and an X-frame that allowed the chair to fold flat like a director's chair. Everest and Jennings formed a company, and their collapsible design became the international standard.

If you go into any hospital today you will find folding wheelchairs that are essentially unchanged since the Everest and Jennings design of eighty years ago. In 2009, Michael Graves, himself a wheelchair user ever since being paralyzed by an infection, was asked by Stryker, a manufacturer of medical equipment, to take a second look at the hospital transport wheelchair. Graves and his team identified several problems with conventional wheelchairs: they were designed to be self-propelled, although hospital chairs were pushed by attendants who frequently suffered back strain because of the awkward placement of the bicycle-type handles; attendants were obliged to bend down each time they adjusted the footrests; and the large wheels were a liability, as they not only tended to bump into things, they picked up infections from the floor and transmitted them to the patient. Not least, hospitals were constantly restocking wheelchairs because the collapsible model was highly susceptible to theft.

Transport wheel chair (Michael Graves)

The Graves solution looks very different from the familiar Everest and Jennings design. The chair does not fold, although it nests to save space. The rear wheels are about a foot in diameter, and out of reach of the patient. Arm- and footrests swing out of the way, and the brake and footrest controls do not require the attendant to bend down but are foot activated. The vertical push handles comfortably accommodate attendants of different heights. Because the wheelchair is not collapsible, the seat and backrest are cushiony molded plastic rather than fabric slings—much more comfortable.

The Graves wheelchair is a simple design. The front members extend from the small casters and footrests, support the backrest, and become the push handles; the back members extend from the larger wheels to support the seat, and become the armrests. The shape of the armrests assists in getting up. The steel frame is white and the plastic parts are dark blue; the critical control points—footrest and armrest releases and the brake pedal—are highlighted in bright yellow.

Like the Everest and Jennings wheelchair, Graves's transport chair is a tool that addresses utilitarian problems—and looks it. Graves was a high-fashion architect, not an engineer, but although he designed a famously whimsical whistling tea kettle, his transport chair conforms to the convention that hospital equipment should be “serious”—no frills. Not that a mobile chair
has
to appear mechanical. We don't know what Oeben's
fauteuil méchanique
looked like, but a surviving eighteenth-century
fauteuil de malade
is a handsome beechwood armchair upholstered in dark red leather—a domestic easy chair that just happens to be on wheels. Voltaire's invalid's chair has survived too, a green velvet armchair on casters that speaks of the salon, not the sickroom. Both are reminders that form does not follow function, it follows culture. Perhaps one day hospital furnishings will look homey rather than institutional—that might not be a bad thing.

 

ELEVEN

Human Engineering

Chairs existed in dynastic China, Georgian England, Colonial America, and fin-de-siècle Vienna. The methods of manufacture varied, from sophisticated to crude, from handcrafted to industrialized, yet the yokeback chair, the cabriole, the sack-back, and the bentwood chair share essential qualities. They demonstrate that a chair, however it is made, is always a chair; it has legs, a back, a seat, and frequently arms. Chairs have accommodated different postures—more or less upright, more or less relaxed—but the human body is a constant. Or is it?

To begin with, the average male is taller than the average female, with wider shoulders and narrower hips. These differences are compounded because men and women come in distinct body types—endomorph (rotund), mesomorph (muscular and bony), and ectomorph (thin and delicate)—and many combinations in between. Although it is possible to establish statistical means, there is no such thing as an “average adult.” People of average weight are not necessarily of average height, those of average height vary in weight, those of average arm span have different-length torsos, and so on. And there are racial differences: East Asians tend to have shorter legs and arms than Caucasians; Africans, longer.

How can the same chair comfortably accommodate a five-foot, hundred-pound female and a six-foot, two-hundred-pound male? The right armrest height for one person is wrong for another; a chair deep enough for a six-footer will be awkward for a shorter person, and vice versa. One traditional solution was to provide different sizes of chairs. Seventeenth-century Flemish family portraits typically show the father occupying a large armchair, the mother in a smaller armchair, a slightly smaller side chair for the grandmother, and miniature chairs for the children. French eighteenth-century chairs such as the bergère and the
chauffeuse
, which were intended for women, had smaller dimensions than a typical fauteuil, although they were often wider to accommodate women's full skirts. Then a subtle shift occurred: cabinetmakers began to make chairs that could be adjusted to suit the sitter. The first modification was an adjustable reclining back, which appeared first in wing chairs and in
fauteuils de malade.
Adjustable reclining chairs in the form of steamer chairs and deck chairs became popular in the second half of the nineteenth century. These were outdoor chairs, but an indoor reclining chair appeared during the same period. The Morris chair, designed by the Arts and Crafts architect Philip Webb and named after his friend William Morris, was a low wooden armchair with a hinged back whose angle could be altered by degrees. The design migrated to the United States where, adapted by Gustav Stickley, it became a staple of the Craftsman style.

Adjustable chairs were driven by a desire for comfort, but in some settings functionality was the main concern. Dentists, for example, required adjustable chairs. The first American dental chair is credited to Josiah Flagg, Jr., a Boston dentist who in the 1790s added an adjustable padded headrest to a continuous-arm Windsor chair. Reclining backs followed. Barbers, too, needed adjustability; customers had to be upright for haircutting but prone for shaving. In 1904, Samuel Kline of Trenton, New Jersey, filed a patent for a barber chair that incorporated “adjustable seat and back members … with a combined foot and leg rest which latter is so constructed as to be readily adjusted to and from the chair to accommodate persons of different heights.” About the same time as Kline was patenting his barber chair, Josef Hoffmann was designing a chair for sanatorium patients: the
Sitzmaschine
with a reclining back and a pull-out footrest.

Medical chairs led the way in adjustability. In 1922, Jean Pascaud, a Parisian physician, introduced an anatomical chaise longue that he called
Le Sur-repos
, which means something like “the restful chair.” Intended for convalescents, the light and elegant chair had a padded seat on a tubular steel base, with a steeply reclining back and a movable headrest. The hinged armrests swung out of the way to facilitate sitting down or getting up. Turning a large wheel on the side rotated the angle of the chair, raising the legs and lowering the head.

In 1928, inspired by Dr. Pascaud, Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Pierre Jeanneret designed a tubular steel contoured chaise longue that sat in a cradle so the overall angle could similarly be altered. The Thonet B306 was widely admired by architects but was not a commercial success, perhaps because it lacked arms, which made it uncomfortable. You also had to get out of the chair to change the angle
.
A British offshoot of the
Sur-repos
was Foot's Adjustable Rest-Chair, a domestic easy chair, likewise with hinged arms. This lounge chair could be converted into a chaise longue thanks to a padded footrest that was concealed under the seat. “Simply press a button and the back declines or automatically rises,” reads the advertisement. “Release the button and the back is instantly locked.” The Rest-Chair resembled a wing chair, and with its paisley-patterned upholstery it looked resolutely old-fashioned, although it was arguably a more advanced “resting machine” than Le Corbusier's clumsy contraption.

Starting in 1937, Gebrüder Thonet produced an unusual convalescent chair. The designers were the architect brothers Hans and Wassili Luckhardt. The Luckhardts were leading Berlin modernists, but their chair was not a typical Bauhaus product. For one thing, it was made out of wood. With contoured slats and an extendable footrest, it recalled a steamer chair. The resemblance was skin-deep, however, for this was a true mechanical chair. The Luckhardts called it a “movement chair” because the back, seat, and footrest were interconnected, so that as the sitter shifted position, the three parts moved together; tightening a knob fixed the desired angle. Thonet marketed the chair as “Siesta-Medizinal,” and during World War II adapted it for hospitals, using a tubular steel frame with coiled springs supporting a full-length leather pad. A wheelchair version accommodated injured servicemen. Aldous Huxley's “hospital style of furnishing” had finally come home.