A mechanical desk is usually an antique

desk A desk or bureau is a piece of furniture with a flat table (furniture), table-style work surface used in a school, office, home or the like for academic, professional or domestic activities such as reading (activity), reading, writing, or using ...

type which was produced during the 18th or the 19th century. At one extreme there are desks furnished with a multitude of panels that swing out while stacks of small drawers pop up when a user lowers or extracts the main writing surface or desktop from a closed position, thanks to some well placed

lever A lever is a simple machine consisting of a beam (structure), beam or rigid rod pivoted at a fixed hinge, or '':wikt:fulcrum, fulcrum''. A lever is a rigid body capable of rotating on a point on itself. On the basis of the locations of fulcrum, l ...

s and

gear A gear or gearwheel is a rotating machine part typically used to transmit rotational motion and/or torque by means of a series of teeth that engage with compatible teeth of another gear or other part. The teeth can be integral saliences or ...

s. At the other extreme are mechanically simple desks like the

Wooton desk The Wooton desk is a variation of the fall front desk, native to Indianapolis, Indiana, and produced from 1874 to 1890. History Indianapolis, Indiana entrepreneur William S. Wooton obtained patents for his desk design in 1874. The desk was intro ...

whose two panels open up separately by hand and whose desktop is also opened in a separate manual operation, without exploiting any gears or levers. The term is used quite loosely. There was an explosion of mechanical desk designs in the second part of the 18th century. This came at the same time as a renewed interest in smaller domestic furniture in the homes of the rich, and the general introduction in their homes of all kinds of new mechanical devices such as small

clock A clock or chronometer is a device that measures and displays time. The clock is one of the oldest Invention, human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month, a ...

s and

wood turning Woodturning is the craft of using a wood lathe with hand-held tools to cut a shape that is symmetrical around the axis of rotation. Like the potter's wheel, the wood lathe is a mechanism that can generate a variety of forms. The operator is kno ...

tools. These devices are described in the ''

Encyclopédie , better known as ''Encyclopédie'' (), was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It had many writers, known as the Encyclopédistes. It was edited by Denis ...

'' of 1772. The devices and the interest in them were a result of the technological ferment which arose in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

during its

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...

, and gradually spread to

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. The mechanical desk fad gradually died at the beginning of the 19th century. By the middle of the 19th century desk mechanisms were mostly simple affairs meant to extract or retract sliders or supports from a

secretary desk A secretary desk or escritoire is made of a base of wide drawers topped by a desk with a hinged desktop surface, which is in turn topped by a bookcase usually closed with a pair of doors, often made of glass. The whole is usually a single, tall ...

, to give but one example.

Sit-stand desk A standing desk or stand-up desk is a desk conceived for writing, reading or drawing while standing up or while sitting on a high stool. History Several writers and statesmen wrote standing up: Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, Winston Churc ...

s, however, became popular again in the 21st century.

References

{{reflist Desks Mechanical furniture

See also

References