Office chair - online puzzles

Office chair

An office chair, or desk chair, is a type of chair that is designed for use at a desk in an office. It is usually a swivel chair, with a set of wheels for mobility and adjustable height. Modern office chairs typically use a single, distinctive load bearing leg (often called a gas lift), which is positioned underneath the chair seat. Near the floor this leg spreads out into several smaller feet, which are often wheeled and called casters. Office chairs were developed around the mid-19th century as more workers spent their shifts sitting at a desk, leading to the adoption of several features not found on other chairs.

Many office activities such as writing or typing involve a forward seat position in front of a work station, emphasizing free use of the arms and hands for reaching and for dexterous activities. Other tasks, such as talking on the telephone, permit a recumbent posture. Static posture, sitting in a single position for long periods of time, places strain on the body and can lead to medical concerns. Teleconferencing, an increasing common business activity, has slightly different postural constraints as compared to typing or audio telephony. Chairs with additional adjustments, such as seat pan tilt, cater to a wider range of use cases; sometimes this is combined with a powered standing desk, to further mobilize the body.

Chairs with castors move best on hard floors or specialized mats. The wheels concentrate the bearing load onto small contact surfaces, and can damage some types of flooring materials, such as traditional hardwood, unless protected by a suitable hard mat. Rolling and swiveling used in combination permits a single office worker to command many different desks or workstations within a small office footprint (often an office cubicle). Plush carpets are unsuitable flooring materials for wheeled chairs. Especially plastic wheels rolling over modern synthetic materials, such as carpet or a plastic floor mat, are capable of generating high level of static charge, which can be damaging to electronic devices in some cases.