Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity by Edward Tenner

Author:Edward Tenner [Tenner, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48922-7
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 2009-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

THE RISE OF AN INDUSTRY, THE FALL OF AN IDEAL

Recliners still faced challenges. Like the original La-Z-Boy the Barcalounger was expensive, even covered in Naugahyde. A skilled workforce assembled it as upholsterers had worked for centuries. Inserting the mechanism complicated the job—and taught the industry to work with more precision, because the tolerances of the metal parts could be highly sensitive—but in the end, a skilled workman upholstered one chair at a time.

Expense was not the only problem. Americans loved to recline, but ever since the waning of patented steel furniture in the 1890s they had resisted having machinery in their homes. And early Barcaloungers were big. Lorenz himself was over six feet tall and developed his mechanisms and prototypes accordingly though Barcalo eventually offered smaller models. Early mechanisms were bulky too, and needed ample space within the chair’s frame. Add this to the patriarchal image of the high-back chair that inspired many early designs, and women’s hostility to postwar recliners becomes understandable. To many, it seemed an intrusion and an aesthetic blot in the living room. Even later variants that could be placed within a few inches of a wall took up six feet of space when extended. Because reclining furniture gets up to six times as much wear as conventional chairs and its construction complicates reupholstery 1950s and 1960s models often used tough vinyl fabrics, many of which nevertheless discolored. Men loved recliners as soon as they tried them, but women controlled the selection of decor, so manufacturers did their best to assure them that they, too, would love sitting in the chairs.

As recliner sales grew, manufacturers looked for ways to increase production and lower prices. La-Z-Boy’s 1941 plant, leased for aircraft parts manufacture, resumed assembly-line production, but it still could not match Barcalo’s output. Morris Futorian, a Russian-born Chicago furniture maker, met Lorenz and licensed his reclining chair ideas. Lorenz had sold exclusive rights to Barcalounger, but controlled other patents that had been seized by the Alien Property Office during the war because of his joint ownership with the architect and German national Hans Luckhardt. He licensed these to Futorian. Barcalo executives felt betrayed but took no legal action.

Meanwhile, Lorenz was developing a web of hundreds of patents and an intricate global licensing system. He continued to help drive the industry Furniture people sometimes asked Futorian, known as a strong-willed, cost-conscious businessman, why he did not use an alternative or imitation mechanism. He replied that he was buying not only the patents but Lorenz’s advice—a tribute indeed, because Futorian was famous for making intuitive changes, as small as a quarter inch in a single dimension of a chair, that multiplied sales. Futorian was also the first to see the potential of northern Mississippi, with its extensive timber and low-wage labor, as a major furniture manufacturing center. Workers who were otherwise unskilled were trained to perform a single operation, such as upholstering a left arm. Barcalo specialized in the upper middle class and La-Z-Boy in the middle class; Futorian saw that in a sprawling nation, the masses also wanted to recline.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.