processed documents or managed processes became what I would call an office. The furniture in these rooms continually evolved to adapt to changes in organisations and technical possibilities. One of the major and more drastic changes was certainly the onset of digitalisation. meetings than at our desks. We like to discuss things with colleagues ‚on the fly‘. So yes, the question is per- haps justified: do we still need a desk at all or is the desk more or less redundant? In my opinion, a desk in an office will continue to be a permanent fixture. But that does not mean that there will not be changes. Quite the opposite. Both the of- fice and the desk will continue to undergo transforma- tions, as they already have in the past. It is important to keep two strands of development in mind. One is the organisational changes to the work life and the other is the technical development, which in turn influences the organisational changes. True to the motto: ‚The tool adapts to requirements and technical possibilities‘. A LOOK INTO HISTORY Let us look back in history: the first room where people The computer made its way into the office. Not only in the accounting and secretarial departments, but also in the planning and design departments. Techni- cal draftspersons moved from the big drawing board to CAD software. Architects, designers, and drafts people swapped their ruler, pencil and compass for a compu- ter, mouse, and keyboard. They were also the ones who prompted a particular development in the office: the electrically height adjustable desk. The drawing board offered the option of working in both a sitting and stan- ding position, so draftspersons and engineers would sit or stand in front of an almost vertical plan. Working while standing? Why shouldn‘t that also be possible with a computer? So, it is not surprising that the first height-adjustable desks were those belonging to the designers. In the ear- ly 1990s, there were CAD desks that could be manually adjusted in height. If you go back further to the year 1910, you will come across the German company Reiss, which launched the first height-adjustable desk. Of course, it could not be adjusted at the push of a button, just like the CAD workbenches at the time. In the 1990s, LINAK developed the first solutions for the electrically height- adjustment of desks. In 1998, LINAK introduced the DL1 lifting column, the world‘s first sys- tem for an electrically height-adjustable office desk. Occupational physicians and ergonomics specia- lists were quickly inspired by the idea of alternating between sitting and stan- ding. However, it took a long time for the sit-stand workplace to establish itself in Germany. 2
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