Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity (48 page)

23.
Katherine C. Grier,
Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850–1930
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 124–29; Kenneth L. Ames, “The Rocking Chair in Nineteenth-Century America,”
Antiques
, vol. 103, no. 2 (February 1973), 322–27; Ames,
Death in the Dining Room
, 216–32.

24.
Cranz,
Chair
, 101–5; photograph reproduced in John Szarkowski, ed.,
The Photographer’s Eye
(New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966), 139, and in George Talbot, ed.,
At Home: Domestic Life in the Post-Centennial Era, 1876–1920
(Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976), 6–7.

25.
Cranz,
Chair
, 155, 206; Adrian Forty,
Objects of Desire
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 123.

26.
Anson
Rabinbach,
The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity
(New York: Basic Books, 1990); Richard Gillespie, “Industrial Fatigue and the Discipline of Physiology,” in Gerald L. Geison, ed.,
Physiology in the American Context, 1850–1940
(Bethesda, Md.: American Physiological Society, 1987), 237–62.

27.
See Roger Cooter and Bill Luckin, eds.,
Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities,
and Social Relations
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997); “The Worker’s Chair,”
Times
(London)
Trade Supplement
, September 18, 1920, 10; Irving Salomon, “How Correct Seating Affects Manufacturing Profits,”
Industrial Management
, vol. 63, no. 6 (June 1922), 332.

28.
Diana Condell,
Working for Victory: Images of Women in the First World War
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 104–5, 112; E. Matthias,
“Getting More from Workers by Giving Them More,”
System
(London), vol. 33. no. 5 (May 1918), 308–14; “Working Hours That Prevent Fatigue,”
System
, vol. 34, no. 2 (August 1918), 157–64.

29.
“The Worker’s Chair,” advertisement,
System
(London), vol. 39, no. 6 (June 1921), 671; G. A. Bettcher, telephone conversation with author, April 5, 2000.

30.
“The Worker’s Chair,” 671; “Scientific Seating,”
advertisement,
Success
(London), vol. 40, no. 5 (November 1921), 427.

31.
“The Worker’s Chair,” 671; “The Worker’s Chair,” advertisement,
Success
(London), vol. 39, no. 4 (April 1921), 455; “Scientific Seating,” advertisement,
Success
(London), vol. 40, no. 5 (November 1921), 427; “The Tan-Sad Chair for Workers,” advertisement,
Success
(London), vol. 40, no. 6 (December 1921), 455; “Prices Which
Defy Competition,” advertisement,
Success
(London), vol. 40, no. 6 (December 1921), 463; “Efficient Seating,” advertisement,
Success
(London), vol. 43, no. 1 (January 1923), 45.

32.
“Worker’s Chair,”
Times
(London)
Trade Supplement
, November 27, 1920, 262; Salomon, “Correct Seating,” 328–30; R. M. Bowen, “Fatigue and Production— Equipment That Eliminates Waste Effort,”
Success
(London), vol.
48, no. 3 (September 1925), 150.

33.
Forty,
Objects of Desire
, 140–42; Yosifon and Stearns, “American Posture,” 1073–78; Yolande Amic, “Sièges de Bureau,” in
L’Empire du Bureau
, 72–74; “Fortschritt-Stuhl,” advertising sheet, 1928 or 1929 (Switzerland), in the Tschichold Collection, Museum of Modern Art (the author thanks Christopher Mount of the Department of Design for making a photocopy available).

34.
Lachmayer, “Bureau du Chef,” 60–61; G. A. Bettcher, telephone conversation, April 5, 2000; “Evolution and Revolution,” advertisement,
Success
(London), vol. 48, no. 3 (September 1925), 150.

35.
“Domore Chair Company—1920’s,” promotional material from company archives by G. A. Bettcher; G. A. Bettcher, telephone conversation, April 19, 2000.

36.
“Domore Chair Company—1930s,” promotional material
supplied by G. A. Bettcher; Jonathan Lipman,
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings
(New York: Rizzoli, 1986), 85–91; Jack Quinan,
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building: Myth and Fact
(New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), 62.

37.
G. E. Macherle to Do/More Chair Company, May 10, 1939.

38.
Jennifer Thiele, “Sit Down Before You Read This,”
Contract
Design
, vol. 32, no. 11 (November 1990), 59.

39.
Thiele, “Sit Down,” 61; Gillespie, “Industrial Fatigue,” 253–57.

40.
Eric Larrabee,
Knoll Design
(New York: Abrams, 1989), 152–53; “Portfolio: Domore 800, Seen by Raymond Loewy Associates.”

41.
“Sitting Down on the Job: Not as Easy as It Seems,”
Occupational Health and Safety
, vol. 50, no. 10 (October 1981), 24–28; G. A. Bettcher, telephone conversation,
April 19, 2000; Thiele, “Sit Down,” 61; “The Big Stakes in Designing a Place to Sit,”
BusinessWeek
, April 26, 1976, 46J.

42.
“Machines à s’asseoir,”
Progressive Architecture
, vol. 61, no. 5 (May 1980), 126–31.

43.
David Morton, “Poetic Pragmatics,”
Progressive Architecture
, vol. 59, no. 9 (September 1978), 98–101.

44.
“You’re Looking at the Control Core of the Most Advanced Task Chair Ever
Developed,” brochure (Washington, D.C.: Rudd International, 1982).

45.
United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Scientific and Technical Information Office,
Anthropometric Source Book
, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: National Technical Information Service, 1978); J. Jay Keegan, “Alterations of the Lumbar Curve Related to Posture and Seating,”
Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery
,
vol. 35-A, no. 3 (July 1953), 589–603; “The Science of Easy Chairs,”
Nature
, vol. 18, no. 468 (October 17, 1878), 637–38; A. C. Mandal, “The Seated Man (Homo Sedens),”
Applied Ergonomics
, vol. 12, no. 3 (March 1981), 19–26; A. C. Mandal, “Balanced Seating,”
Interior Design
, vol. 58, no. 15 (December 1987), 178–79.

46.
Cranz,
Chair
, 170–76.

47.
“Can Your Chair Do This?”
Managing Office Technology
, vol. 41, no. 1 (January 1996), 38 ff.

48.
Lawrence Shames, “Seats of Power,”
New York Times Magazine
, June 11, 1989, 65–66, 78–79.

49.
William Houseman, “The Preface to a Serious Chair,”
Design Quarterly
, no. 126 (1984), 5–23; “An Automatic Winner?”
Design
, no. 453 (September 1986), 40–41; Alix M. Freedman, “Today’s Office Chair Promises Happiness, Has Lots of Knobs,”
Wall Street Journal
, June
18, 1986, n.p.; Jura Koncius, “Furniture: High Style Comes to the Workplace,”
Washington Post
, June 19, 1986, Washington Home sec., 9.

50.
Vernon Mays, “The Ultimate Office Chair,”
Progressive Architecture
, vol. 69, no. 5 (May 1988), 98 ff.

51.
Robert Bishop,
Centuries and Styles of the American Chair
(New York: Dutton, 1972), 373.

52.
Janet Travell,
Office Hours: Day and Night
(New York: World,
1968), 274.

53.
Terril Yue Jones, “Face Off. Sit on It,”
Forbes
, July 5, 1999, 53; Scott Leith, “Chair vs. Chair,”
Grand Rapids Press
, June 13, 1999.

54.
Sue Emily Martin,
Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).

55.
Dan Logan, “Home Office Thrones,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 9, 1999.

56.
“Science of Easy
Chairs,” 638.

1.
A. Roger Ekirch, “Sleep We Have Lost: Preindustrial Slumber in the British Isles,”
American Historical Review
, vol. 105, no. 2 (April 2000), 343–87; Peter N. Stearns et al., “Children’s Sleep: Sketching Historical Change,”
Journal of Social History
, vol. 30, no. 2 (Winter 1996), 345–66; Jerome A. Hirschfeld, “The ‘Back-to-Sleep’ Campaign Against SIDS,”
American Family
Physician
, vol. 51, no. 3 (February 15, 1995), 622ff.; Bruce Bower, “Slumber’s Unexplored Landscape,”
Science News
, vol. 156, no. 13 (September 25, 1999), 205.

2.
Lawrence Wright,
Warm and Snug: The History of the Bed
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 177–78.

3.
Robert Gifford and Robert Sommer, “The Desk or the Bed?”
Personnel and Guidance Journal
, vol. 46, no. 9 (May 1968), 876–78.

4.
Oswyn Murray, “Sympotic History,” in Oswyn Murray, ed.,
Sympotica: A Symposium on the
Symposium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 3–13; Margaret Visser,
The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners
(Toronto: HarperCollins, 1991), 152–55.

5.
Clive Edwards, “Reclining Chairs Surveyed: Health, Comfort and Fashion in Evolving Markets,”
Studies in the
Decorative Arts
, vol. 6, no. 1 (Fall—Winter 1998–1999), 32–67; Pamela Tudor-Craig, “Times and Tides,”
History Today
, vol. 48, no. 1 (January 1998), 2–5. On sixteenth-century information overload, see Geoffrey Parker,
The Grand Strategy of Philip II
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 42–45.

6.
Edwards, “Reclining Chairs Surveyed,” 36–37;
The Collection of Arne Schlesch
(New York: Sotheby’s,
2000), 179; Wendy Moonan, “Scandinavian Dealer Sells His
Treasures,”
New York Times
, March 31, 2000. Despite special mention in the
Times
, the piece failed to sell, perhaps because the estimate of $10,000 to $15,000 seemed high for what Moonan described as “an 18th-century precursor to the La-Z-Boy.”

7.
Margaret Campbell, “From Cure Chair to
Chaise Longue:
Medical Treatment and the Form of the
Modern Recliner,”
Journal of Design History
, vol. 12, no. 4 (1999), 327–28; Edwards, “Reclining Chairs Surveyed,” 36–39.

8.
Tudor-Craig, “Times and Tides,” 3.

9.
Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises: Le Dix-septième Siècle
(Paris: Fayard, 1954), 861–64; William L. Hamilton, “The Long … and Short of It,”
New York Times
, March 9, 1995; Madeleine Jarry,
Le Siège Français
(Fribourg: Office du Livre,
1973), 53–56.

10.
Jarry,
Siège Français
, 67, 78–81; John Gloag,
The Englishman’s Chair
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1964), 139–42.

11.
Orlando Sabertash,
The Art of Conversation, with Remarks on Fashion and Address
(London, 1842), 148, quoted in Campbell, “Cure Chair to
Chaise Longue
,” 328.

12.
Katherine C. Grier,
Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850–1930
(Washington,
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 117–30.

13.
Ibid., 117–42, 193–210.

14.
Edwards, “Reclining Chairs Surveyed,” 42–45.

15.
U.S. patent 9,449 (December 1852), issued to J. T. Hammitt; Sharon Darling,
Chicago Furniture: Art, Craft, & Industry, 1833–1983
(New York: Norton, 1984), 86–88;
Asher and Adams’s Pictorial Album of American Industry, 1876
(New York: Rut-ledge Books, 1976), 69;
Edwards, “Reclining Chairs Surveyed,” 51–54.

16.
Giedion,
Mechanization Takes Command
, 418–22.

17.
Edwards, “Reclining Chairs Surveyed,” 54–56; Kevin Oderman, “How Things Fit Together,”
Southwest Review
, vol. 81, no. 2 (Spring 1996), 235–46; Bruce E. Johnson, “The Morris Chair,”
Country Living
, January 1988, 23–24;
Sears, Roebuck & Co. 1908 Catalogue No. 117
, ed. Joseph J. Schroeder, Jr. (Chicago:
Follett, 1969), 448–49.

18.
“… and Morris Chair Makes a Comeback,”
Petersburg Times
, February 14, 1988.

19.
Sears 1908 Catalogue
, 449.

20.
Ibid., 444.

21.
Albert B. Jannsen,
La-Z-Boy: I Remember When
(Monroe, Mich.: La-Z-Boy Chair Co., n.d.), 2–7; U.S. Patent 1,789,337, January 20, 1931, issued to Edward M. Knabusch and Edwin J. Shoemaker.

22.
Jannsen,
La-Z-Boy
, 7–8; “La-Z-Boy, Specialist
in Reclining Comfort,”
Furniture South
, vol. 35, no. 3 (March 1956), unpaginated copy; Dave Hoekstra, “A Pilgrimage for the Armchair Traveler,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, September 6, 1998; Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogue, Fall—Winter 1939–40, 620–21.

23.
Alexander von Vegesack,
Thonet: Classic Furniture in Bent Wood and Tubular Steel
(London: Hazar, 1996), 90–91, 118–19; Campbell, “From Cure Chair to
Chaise Longue
,” 335.

24.
The Dictionary of Art
, s.v. “Klint, Kaare (Jensen); Alexander von Vegesack et al.,
100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum
(Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 1996), 72–73; Renato de Fusco,
Le Corbusier, Designer Furniture, 1929
(Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron’s, 1977), 10–22, 30–37, 68; Mary McLeod, “Furniture and Femininity,”
Architectural Review
, vol. 181, no. 1079 (January
1987), 43–46.

25.
Von Vegesack et al.,
100 Masterpieces
, 80.

26.
Unless otherwise noted, information on Anton Lorenz derives from interviews
views with his associate, the engineer Peter Fletcher, who collaborated on chair designs with Lorenz until Lorenz’s death in 1964, and purchased intellectual property and papers (hereafter cited as “Lorenz papers”) from the Lorenz estate; Henry Conston,
interview, July 7, 2000.