Tag: swivel chair

Wikipedia says: A swivel, spinny, or revolving chair is a chair with a single central leg that allows the seat to rotate 360 degrees to the left or right. The first swivel chair was invented by Thomas Jefferson, and is purported to be the chair on which he drafted the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776.

A concept of a height-adjustable, swivelling chair with castors was illustrated by the Nuremberg patrician Martin Löffelholz von Kolberg in his 1505 technological illuminated manuscript, the so-called Löffelholz Codex, on folio 10r.

Using an English-style Windsor chair, possibly made by and purchased from Francis Trumble or Philadelphia cabinet-maker Benjamin Randolph, Thomas Jefferson invented the first swivel chair. Jefferson heavily modified the Windsor chair and incorporated top and bottom parts connected by a central iron spindle, enabling the top half known as the seat, to swivel on casters of the type used in rope-hung windows. It had no wheels. When the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, Jefferson’s swivel chair is purported to be the chair he sat upon when he drafted the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. Jefferson later had the swivel chair sent to his Virginia plantation, Monticello, where he built a “writing paddle” onto its side in August 1791.

Since 1836, the chair has been in the possession of the American Philosophical Society located in Philadelphia.