When Charles Darwin Took a Break from Evolution to Reinvent the Modern Office

We’re all thoroughly familiar with the achievements of Charles Darwin. Well, unless you grew up with a particularly Christ-focused schoolboard, I suppose. Even so, you’ve probably picked up the big parts through the day-to-day discussions of nearby heathens. He’s widely known as the father of evolution, and I don’t think that fact needs any more belaboring. Apes, monkeys, all our ancestors, and so on and so forth. Apologies for anyone in Florida whose internet provider suddenly blocked the rest of this article.

Darwin also had one startling new idea that’s more concerned with the future than the past, and one that’s much less thoroughly documented. Far from the worlds of island birds with beaks for different food types, Darwin made a very concrete advancement that you’re more than likely in physical contact with right now. He was responsible for a little evolution of his own: the wheeled office chair. 

Yes, that Charles Darwin also has a largely unrecognized role in the world of industrial design.

Apparently, while working in his old-fashioned chair, Darwin was frustrated with having to drag it around from specimen to specimen. Frustrated enough to take to the woodshop and saw the chair’s legs off altogether, and replace them with wheeled bottoms from his bed frame. It was a sea change for the chairs of the working stiff, and Darwin cooked it up all the way back in the mid-1800s. 

So, the next time you see an excited scientist in a movie quickly sailing themselves from desk to microscope, just know that that was all Charles Darwin.