Desk Totally Explained

A desk is a furniture form and a class of table. It is often used in a work or office setting to read or write on, using simple implements like a pencil and paper or complex ones like a computer. Desks often have one or more drawers. Unlike a regular table, only one side of a desk is suitable to sit on, except for some unusual desks like a partners desk. Not all desks have the form of a table. For instance, an Armoire desk is a desk built within a large wardrobe-like cabinet usually having the height of an adult person. To many the ideal or generic concept of a desk is the pedestal desk, which is often called an executive desk. At one extreme in size one finds the Armoire desk, encased in a very large cabinet looking like a traditional wardrobe from the exterior, when the doors are closed. At the other end one finds the portable desk, which, in its smallest forms, is light enough to be placed on a lap or on small supports on a bed.

Early desks

Desk forms might have existed in classical antiquity or in other ancient centers of civilization in the Middle East or Far East, but we've no specific proof. Medieval illustrations show the first pieces of furniture which seem to have been designed and constructed for the specific goals of 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. The desks were designed, consequentially, with slots and hooks for bookmarks as well as writing implements. The absence of regular movable type printing also influenced desk size and shape because of the bigger volumes required for manuscript documents. 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. 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.

Classical desk forms

The desk forms we're 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's only a refinement of the mechanically complex drawing table or drafting table of the end of the 18th century.

Industrial-era desks

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. This produced a boom in the number of, or some might say the birth of, the white-collar worker. As these office workers grew in number, desks were mass-produced 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 doesn't 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. 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. 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 new desks can be transformed into many different shapes and angles, ideal for artists.

Desks groaning under masses of paper

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. 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 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 or writing table constructed for use by a teenager or a pre-teen in his or her room at home. More often than not it's 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 or wood and sold on the consumer market. In addition there's a wide variety of plans available for woodworking 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 on desk forms

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 design also included "U-shape" suites which added a bridge worksurface between the back credenza and front desk. This bridge was used to hold the increasing focus of computer time. During the North American recession of the early 1990's, many manager and executive workers found themselves doing more with less including word processing and other functions previously completed by typing pools and secretaries. This necessitated the more central placement of the computer on these "U-shape" suite desk systems.
   Now 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. There would be no need for paper since all documents would be perfectly organized and accessible on the computers. The exact opposite happened. The ease of printing personal documents and the lack of comfort with computer monitors found workers in piles of paper. The need for paperwork space vied with the rising desk "real estate" taken up by computer monitors, CPUs, printers and scanners.
   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 homes for 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.
   Early in the 2000s, private office workers find their side and back computer-placing furniture doesn't "fit" their work day and fails to promote the increasing attention on the value of relationships. This attention due to the fact that so many spend their day staring at a computer monitor rather than interacting physically in front of other people. Manufacturers are slowly noticing this problem and creating what one office furniture company calls "Forward Facing" desks where computer monitors are placed on the front of the "U-shape" workstation. This turns private office workers spending many hours on computers, towards guests. This forward computer monitor placement promotes a clearer sight-line to greet colleagues, increase computer screen privacy and allow for common viewing of information displayed on a screen.

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