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A desk is a furniture form and a class of table often used in a work or office setting for reading or writing on or using a computer. Furniture is the Mass noun for the movable objects which may support the human body (seating furniture and beds, provide storage or hold objects on horizontal A table is a form of Furniture composed of a surface supported by a base usually four legs An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an Organization with specific duties attached A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. Desks often have one or more drawers to store office supplies and papers. A drawer is a piece of Furniture that is most often shaped as a short wide topless box and is used for storage Unlike a regular table, only one side of a desk is suitable to sit on, except for some unusual desks such as a 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 Not all desks have the form of a table. For instance, an Armoire desk is a desk built within a large wardrobe-like cabinet, and a portable desk is light enough to be placed on a person's lap. An armoire Desk is a writing-table built within a large cabinet usually having the height of a tall man or a small woman or anything in between 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

Typical rolltop desk
Typical rolltop desk

Contents

Early desks

Desk-style furniture might have existed in classical antiquity or in other ancient centers of civilization in the Middle East or Far East, but there is no specific proof. 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 Classical antiquity (also the classical era or classical period) is a broad term for a long period of cultural History centered on the Mediterranean The Middle East is a Subcontinent with no clear boundaries often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East. The Far East is a term often used by people in the Western world to refer to the countries of East Asia. Medieval 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 in the 15th century, any reader was potentially a writer or publisher or both, since any book or other document had to be copied by hand. A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth thereby transferring an image A Book is a set or collection of written printed illustrated or blank sheets made of Paper, Parchment, or other material usually fastened together A document (noun is a bounded physical representation of body of Information designed with the capacity (and usually intent to Communicate. The desks were designed with slots and hooks for bookmarks and for writing implements. A bookmark is a thin marker commonly made of Paper or Card, used to keep one's place in a Book and so be able to return to it with ease Since manuscript volumes were sometimes large, and heavy, desks of the period usually had massive structures.

Desks of the Renaissance and later eras had relatively slimmer structures, and more and more drawers as woodworking became more precise and cabinet-making became a distinct trade. The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere Woodworking is the process of building making or carving something using Wood. 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 and the powder tray) and room for the pens. Blotting paper is a Type of Paper or other Material which is used to absorb an excess of substance (such as Ink or Oil) from A pen (Latin pinna, feather is a Writing instrument used to apply Ink to a surface usually Paper.

The desk forms we are familiar with in this beginning of the millennium were born mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. As a means of recording the passage of Time, the 17th Century was that Century which lasted from 1601 - 1700 in the Gregorian calendar The 18th century lasted from 1701 to 1800 in the Gregorian calendar, in accordance with the Anno Domini / Common Era numbering system 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. The ergonomic desk and related computer desk are Furniture pieces designed to comfortably and aesthetically provide a working surface and house or conceal office equipment A drawing board (also drawing table, drafting table or architect's table) is in its antique form a kind of multipurpose Desk which can be

Industrial era

Untidy desk
Untidy desk

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. The 19th century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1801 and ended on December 31, 1900, according to the Gregorian calendar A steam engine is a Heat engine that performs Mechanical work using Steam as its Working fluid. The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture manufacturing and transportation had a profound effect on the This produced a boom in the number of, or some might say the birth of, the white-collar worker. 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 As these office workers grew in number, desks were mass-produced for them in large quantities, using newer, steam-driven woodworking machinery. Mass production (also called flow production, repetitive flow production, series production, or serial production) is the production of 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. A machine tool is a powered mechanical device typically used to fabricate metal components of machines by Machining, which is the selective removal of metal 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 which was a mass produced, slatted variant of the classical cylinder 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 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 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 cabinets. A filing cabinet (or file cabinet in the United States) is a piece of office equipment that is useful for temporary and permanent storage 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 pigeonholed in a small compartment over or under the work surface of the desk. The famous Wooton desk and others were the last, monstrous manifestations of the dying "pigeonhole" era. The Wooton Desk is a variation of the Fall front desk. It is the embodiment (in the field of desk design and construction of the phenomenon of Conspicuous The new desks can be transformed into many different shapes and angles, 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 papers coupled with the general acceptance of the typewriter. The twentieth century of the Common Era began on Carbon paper (originally carbonic paper) is Paper coated on one side with a layer of a loosely bound dry Ink or pigmented coating usually bound with A typewriter is a mechanical or Electromechanical device with a set of "keys" that when pressed cause characters to be printed on a medium 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. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including A photocopier (or copier is a machine that makes Paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply 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. Microforms are any form either films or paper containing microreproductions of documents for transmission storage reading and printing Modular desks seating several co-workers close by became common. Even executive or management desks became mass-produced, built of cheap plywood or fiberboard covered with wood veneer, as the number of persons managing the white collar workers became even greater. Plywood is a type of Engineered board made from thin sheets of Wood, called plies or veneers

A desk in an office, yesterday.
A desk in an office, yesterday.

Student desks

A student desk can be any desk form meant for use by a student. Usually the term designates a small pedestal desk or writing table constructed for use by a teenager or a pre-teen in his or her room at home. A pedestal desk is usually a large free-standing Desk made of a simple rectangular working surface resting on two pedestals or small Cabinets of stacked A writing table (French bureau plat) has a series of drawers directly under the surface of the table to contain writing implements so that it may serve as a Desk 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.

An example of a student desk.
An example of a student desk.

The desks are usually mass produced in steel or wood and sold on the consumer market. Steel is an Alloy consisting mostly of Iron, with a Carbon content between 0 Wood is hard fibrous lignified structural tissue produced as secondary Xylem in the stems of Woody plants notably trees but also shrubs In addition there is a wide variety of plans available for woodworking enthusiasts. Woodworking is the process of building making or carving something using Wood. 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. bunk bed is a type of bed in which one Bed frame is stacked on top of another

Impact of computers

Until the late 1980's desks remained a place for paperwork and business negotiation. Mainframe computers were relegated to a special "computer room" and human workers were guests in this space. Furniture largely separated these two entities except in data entry departments. Many manager-level workers if they did have a computer had a small computer desk unit in the corner of their office.

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", in which all information would appear on computer monitors. Historical perspective The paperless office was a Publicist 's slogan meant to describe the Office of the future. A visual display unit, often called simply a monitor or display, is a piece of Electrical equipment which displays images generated from the Video 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 at the back of the desk, such as multi-outlets and cabling. A modesty panel is a thin board of wood or metal that is attached to the front of a Desk, Electronic organ, or similar

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. "Cubicle" is also used to refer to a toilet stall in a Washroom. 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 and business cards. The Post-it note, invented by 3M 's Art Fry using an adhesive developed by a colleague Spencer Silver, is a piece of Stationery with a re-adherable Business cards are Cards bearing business Information about a Company or Individual.

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.

See also

External links

References

Articles and books on real and virtual desks and things in between:

Real desks

Virtual desktops, GUIs, and the virtual office

Dictionary

desk

-noun

  1. A table, frame, or case, usually with sloping top, but often with flat top, for the use writers and readers. It often has a drawer or repository underneath.
  2. A reading table or lectern to support the book from which the liturgical service is read, differing from the pulpit from which the sermon is preached; also (esp. in the United States), a pulpit. Hence, used symbolically for the clerical profession.

-verb

  1. To shut up, as in a desk; to treasure.
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