Tristan wrote:
I don’t suppose anyone wrote any reminiscences about a large office in the old days? I'd be very interested to read about it. Memories, perhaps from members?
Well, I still have (and use) my old office desk. The company gave it to me (for a dollar, to satisfy the tax people) when they upgraded the furniture to a "cubicle farm" in the early '90s. The desk was probably made in the '60s or '70s.
The main desk height is 29 inches, while the typewriter extension table has a height of 24 inches. It looks similar to this one (I don't feel like cleaning mine off to take an actual picture...):
Anyway, the typewriter surface is a full 5 inches below the "writing" surface, and it works very well for that purpose. The picture above looks closer to 3 inches - perhaps there was some variation over the years. While we had adjustable office chairs, they certainly didn't raise/lower 5 inches. Even if they did, our legs would have been in an uncomfortable position at one side or the other. So a typewriter really DOES need to be on a lower surface than one would use for writing, regardless of the chair used. The chair is then adjusted to be at the optimum height for writing (the main surface), and then it's automatically at the correct height for typing as well.
Anyway, that was the "usual" setup in my office, and several other offices I visited from the mid '70s to the early '90s. Before that, I recall seeing typewriters on roll-around carts, which were also lower than typical desk height.
