Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity

by Edward Tenner

  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.

  27. Christopher Wilk, Marcel Breuer: Furniture and Interiors (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1981), 73–78; Werner Möller and Otakar Mé¯el, Ein Stuhl Macht Geschichte (Munich: Prestel, 1992), 85–92.

  28. Von Vegesack et al., 100 Masterpieces, 80; Gunther Lehmann, “Zur Physiologie des Liegens,” Arbeitsphysiologie, vol. 11 (1941), 253–58.

  29. Wilk, Thonet, 112–13; Möller and Mé¯el, Ein Stuhl Macht Geschichte, 98.

  30. Möller and Mé¯el, Ein Stuhl Macht Geschichte, 98. Many details of Lorenz’s relations with Barcalo and other U.S. manufacturers also are given in: 1) unsigned and undated history of Barcalo, Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo State College; 2) memorandum of company history, Barcalounger Company files; and 3) Ernest F. Becher, “Development of Automotive Seating and Mechanical Chairs” (1983), Barca-lounger Company files.

  31. “NOW Available for Selective Retail Distribution,” advertisement, Retailing, September 10, 1945, 4.

  32. “Recline-Relax-Recuperate Chairs” (Floral City, Mich.: Floral City Furniture, n.d.); La-Z-Boy archives; Walter B. Pitkin, Take It Easy: The Art of Relaxation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935), 234–44; “Chair,” The New Yorker, December 10, 1949, 32–33.

  33. George W. Kinker, “Learn to Relax,” Today’s Health, vol. 29, no. 11 (November 1951), 22 ff.; Joseph L. Fetterman, M.D., “Roads to Relaxation,” Today’s Health, vol. 31, no. 11 (November 1953), 18 ff.

  34. Peter Blake and Jane Fiske McCullough, “Very Significant Chair,” Harper’s Magazine, vol. 217, no. 1299 (August 1958), 66–71; Joseph Giovannini, “For Long, Leisurely Sitting, Traditional Chairs Are Best,” New York Times, April 18, 1986.

  35. “Leisure, or How Does the American Relax?” Life, July 12, 1955, 72–73; Sylvia Wright, “Do We Sit? No, We Collapse,” New York Times Magazine, April 19, 1964, 26 ff.

  36. “Only Stratolounger Gives You a Complete! Profitable! Reclining Chair Department,” advertisement, Home Furnishings Daily, July 29, 1958, sec. 1, 7; “It’s Here!” advertisement, Home Furnishings Daily, June 29, 1959, 29; “There Is Only One Leader,” advertisement, Home Furnishings Daily, June 17, 1963, sec. 1, 3.

  37. “La-Z-Boy, Specialist in Reclining Comfort,” n.p.

  38. Hortense Herman, “New Mechanisms, Forms Make Chairs Big News,” Home Furnishings Daily, June 16, 1959, 1.

  39. Gary Garrity, “Style of Reclining Loungers Creating Demand in Topeka,” Home Furnishings Daily, June 15, 1964, 44; Clark Rogers, telephone interview, August 5, 2000.

  40. John A. Byrne, “Sittin’ and Rockin’,” Forbes, November 7, 1983, 124; “The Evolution of the La-Z-Boy Recliner,” 2.

  41. Joan Kron, “The New York Magazine Comfortable Chair Competition,” New York, July 22, 1974, 43–49.

  42. “Sunny Side Up,” People Weekly, April 10, 2000, 200–202.

  43. 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, with no reference to Lehmann’s paper on the Lorenz experiments; National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Anthropometric Source Book, vol. 1: Anthropometry for Designers (NASA Reference Publication 1024), 1978, IV-21; Susan M. Andrews, “Recliners: Good for Your Health,” Furniture/Today, June 12, 2000, 8–9; “Selling the Spanish Siesta,” Economist, February 6, 1999, 54; K.B., “Siesta Time,” Forbes, January 31, 1994, 119.

  44. American Furniture Manufacturers Association, AFMA 1999 Sales Planning Guide (n.p.: AFMA, 1999), 9, 11; Nancy Butler, “Stagnant Recliner Market Offset by Higher Tickets,” Furniture/Today, November 17, 1997, 8–10.

  45. Charles Allen, Raj: A Scrapbook of British India, 1877–1947 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), 60–61, 84–85.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1. “Keyboard,” New Grove Encyclopedia of Music, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 13, 510–13; Max Weber, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans. and ed. Don Martindale et al. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958), 117.

  2. “Keyboard,” New Grove Encyclopedia.

  3. Weber, Foundations of Music, 114–17; Thomas Levenson, Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 27–38.

  4. Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origin of Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 82–99; Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power of Writing, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 153–54; David Gelernter, “Bound to Succeed,” New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1999, 132.

  5. Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Ec
onomic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 48–51.

  6. Edmund A. Bowles, “On the Origins of the Keyboard Mechanism in the Late Middle Ages,” Technology and Culture, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1966), 152–62.

  7. See Edward Rothstein, “Every Piano Is a Society,” New York Times, August 24, 1986; “Tuning,” Encyclopedia of the Piano (New York and London: Garland, 1996), 410–13. For a fascinating history of this technical but vital subject, see Stuart Isacoff, Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music’s Greatest Riddle (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001).

  8. “Cristofori, Bartolomeo,” Encyclopedia of the Piano, 97–105.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Brent Gillespie, “Haptic Display of Systems with Changing Kinematic Constraints: The Virtual Piano Action” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1996), 7–16.

  11. Sheryl Maureen P. Mueller, “Concepts of Nineteenth-Century Piano Pedagogy in the United States” (Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, 1995), 26.

  12. “Beethoven, Ludwig van,” Encyclopedia of the Piano, 44–47.

  13. Arthur Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), 366–67; Mick Hamer, “Smashing Performance Franz, Play It Again,” New Scientist, vol. 108, no. 1487–88 (December 19/26, 1985), 46.

  14. “Frames,” Encyclopedia of the Piano, 137–39.

  15. Cyril Ehrlich, The Piano: A History, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 107, 138–40; Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos, 520–31, 611.

  16. Craig H. Roell, The Piano in America, 1800–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 8–10.

  17. Mueller, Concepts of Piano Pedagogy, 104–33.

  18. Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos, 291–92.

  19. “Barrel Piano,” Encyclopedia of the Piano, 41–42; Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume, Pianola: The History of the Self-Playing Piano (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984), 9–22.

  20. Mick Hamer, “Rave from the Grave,” New Scientist, vol. 160, no. 2165–66-67 (December 19/26, 1998/January 2, 1999), 18–19; Ord-Hume, Pianola, 31–35.

  21. Roell, Piano in America, 14–15; Hamer, “Rave from the Grave,” 18.

  22. Roell, Piano in America, 185–221; Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos, 602–3; Ehrlich, Piano, 186–87, 222.

  23. Rudolph Chelminski, “In Praise of Pianos … and the Artists Who Play Them,” Smithsonian, vol. 30, no. 12 (March 2000), 71–72.

  24. “Clutsam, Ferdinand” and “Keyboards,” Encyclopedia of the Piano, 82, 202–4; Ernest Hutchenson, The Literature of the Piano: A Guide for Amateur and Student, 2nd ed., rev. Rudolph Ganz (London: Hutchinson, 1969), 14–15.

  25. Ibid.

  26. “Paul von Jankó,” Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1957) vol. 6, 1710–13; “Jankó, Paul von,” Encyclopedia of the Piano, 185–86; Edwin L. Good, Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos: A Technological History from Cristofori to the Modern Concert Grand, 2nd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 258–62.

  27. Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers (New York: Dover, 1972), 78–83; John S. Allen, telephone interview, April 25, 2001.

  28. “Jankó,” Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 6, 1713.

  29. Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, 80.

  30. Constantin Sternberg, “Ad Vocem, Jankó Keyboard,” The Musical Courier, vol. 22, no. 2 (January 14, 1891), 39; Good, Giraffes, 262–64.

  31. Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, 80.

  32. “Keyboard Revamp Could Take Terror Out of Piano Practice,” New Scientist, vol. 132, no. 1793 (November 9, 1991), 28; Tara Patel, “Mathematical Piano Sounds a Logical Note,” New Scientist, vol. 134, no. 1821 (May 16, 1992), 20.

  33. Albert Glinsky, Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 22–49.

  34. Ibid, 119–20, 138, 142, 145–48.

  35. Jean Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, Luthier de l’Électronique (Montreal: Louise Courteau, 1990), 45–57, figs. 18–55.

  36. Hutcheson, Literature of the Piano, 18; on current and older piano construction and maintenance, see Larry Fine, The Piano Book: Buying and Owning a New or Used Piano, 4th ed. (Boston: Brookside Press, 2001).

  37. Larry Fine, The Piano Book: Buying and Owning a New or Used Piano, 3rd ed. (Boston: Brookside Press, 1994), 91–93; http://www.overspianos.com.au and articles reprinted there.

  38. Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, “The Social Construction of the Early Electronic Music Synthesizer,” Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology, vol. 4 (1998), 9–19.

  39. Ibid., 22; Frank Houston, “Gather Round the Electronic Piano,” New York Times, December 16, 1999.

  40. Mark Tucker, “The Piano in Jazz,” in James Parakilas, ed., Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 374; James Parakilas, “New Specialties in the Musical Marketplace,” in ibid., 391.

  41. See Allen’s Web site: http://www.bikexprt.com/music/index.htm.

  42. Robert A. Moog and Thomas L. Rhea, “Evolution of the Keyboard Interface: The Bösendorfer 290 SE Recording Piano and the Moog Multiply-Touch-Sensitive Keyboards,” Computer Music Journal, vol. 14, no. 2 (Summer 1990), 52–60.

  43. Mick Hamer, “Physics Under the Keyboard,” New Scientist, vol. 108, no. 1487–88 (December 19/26, 1985), 44–47; Edwin M. Good, telephone interview, May 8, 2001.

  44. Moog and Rhea, “Evolution of the Keyboard Interface,” 52, 58–89.

  45. Gillespie, “Haptic Display,” 29–30.

  46. See ibid. for an exposition of the paradox of piano actions and for ideas on future haptic keyboards.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1. Christopher de Hamel, Scribes and Illuminators (Toronto: University of To r onto Press, 1992), 7, 29, 35–39.

  2. Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power of Writing, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 230–31; de Hamel, Scribes and Illuminators, 37–39.

  3. Donald M. Anderson, Calligraphy: The Art of Written Forms (New York: Dover, 1992), 134–37.

  4. Ibid., 140–52.

  5. Asa Briggs, Victorian Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 182–86.

  6. Anderson, Calligraphy, 272; George Pratt, “A Pen of Steel,” in Thomas R. Lounsbury, ed., Yale Book of American Verse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1913), 401.

  7. Anne Swardson, “Aren’t Fountain Pens Fun? No; They’re Too Hard,” Washington Post, October 5, 1997; Bruno Delmas, “Révolution Industrielle et Mutation Administrative: l’Innovation dans l’administration Française aux XIXème Siècle,” Histoire, Économie et Société, vol. 4, no. 2 (1985), 210.

  8. See Henry Petroski, The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).

  9. Tamara Plakins Thornton, Handwriting: A Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 46–66.

  10. Ibid., 66–71, 163–64.

  11. Samuel Solly, “Scriveners’ Palsy, or the Paralysis of Writers,” Lancet, December 24, 1864, 709–11.

  12. Richard N. Current, The Typewriter and the Men Who Made It (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1954), 22–26.

  13. See Paul Israel, From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory: Telegraphy and the Changing Context of American Invention, 1830–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

  14. G. C. Mares, The History of the Typewriter: Successor to the Pen (Arcadia, Calif.: Post-Era Books, 1985 [1909]), 28–32; A. Baggenstos, Von der Bilderschrift zur Schreib-maschine (Zurich: n.p., 1977), 37–39.

  15. Cited in Current, Typewriter, 11; Cynthia Monaco, “The Difficult Birth of the Typewriter,” American Heritage of Invention and Technology, vol. 4, no. 21 (Spring/Summer 1988), 12.

  16. Mares, Typewriter, 140–44; Current, Typewriter, 42–43.

  17. Current, Typewriter, 37–38.

  18. Monaco, “Difficult Birth,” 17–18.

  19. On the effects of organizational growth and education on office i
nformation technology, see the brilliant work of Delmas, “Révolution Industrielle,” 205–32.

  20. Chas. Howard Montague, cited in Bates Torrey, Practical Typewriting: By the All-Finger Method,… (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1889), [4].

  21. Christopher Keep, “The Cultural Work of the Type-Writer Girl,” Victorian Studies, vol. 40, no. 3 (Spring 1997), 405; Current, Typewriter, 120; Jack Quinan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building: Myth and Fact (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), 48–49, 53.

  22. Israel, Machine Shop, 134–35, 163–65; Basil Kahan, Ottmar Mergenthaler: The Man and His Machine (New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2000), 179–81, 282–84; Ava Baron, “Contested Terrain Revisited: Technology and Gender Definitions of Work in the Printing Industry, 1850–1920,” in Barbara Drygulski Wright et al., eds., Women, Work, and Technology: Transformations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987), 58–83.

  23. The History of Touch Typing (New York: Wyckoff, Seamans, and Benedict, n.d.), 6–7.

  24. Ibid., 9–11.

  25. Ibid., 13–15.

  26. Ibid., 17–21; Torrey, Practical Typewriting, 3–20.

  27. Current, Typewriter, 55–58.

  28. Mares, Typewriter, 145–51; Paul Lippman, American Typewriters: A Collector’s Encyclopedia (Hoboken, N.J.: Original & Copy, 1992), 33–40.

  29. See “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY,” American Economic Review, vol. 75, no. 2 (May 1985), 332–37.

  30. August Dvorak et al., Typewriting Behavior: Psychology Applied to Teaching and Learning Typewriting (New York: American Book Company, 1936), 267–75; Delphine Gardey, “The Standardization of a Technical Practice: Typing (1883–1930),” History and Technology, vol. 15 (1999), 326.

  31. Dvorak et al., Typewriting Behavior, esp. 81–101, 284–301.