Mechanical desk

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 levers and gears.

At the other extreme are mechanically simple desks like the Wooton desk 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.

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 clocks and wood turning tools.

The devices and the interest in them were a result of the technological ferment which arose in the United Kingdom during its Industrial Revolution, and gradually spread to Europe.

The mechanical desk fad gradually died at the beginning of the 19th century.