The First Office Chair

Here’s a fun fact for you: Do you know who invented the office chair?

The first office chair was crudely fashioned by Charles Darwin in the 1840s so that he could get around his workspace more easily. Darwin accomplished this feat by affixing small wheels to the bottom of the chair that was in his study. Within a few years his chair caught on, and soon German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was putting these wheeled-chairs throughout the parliament.

Our office chairs today only loosely resemble Darwin’s. While some sofas and accent chairs haven’t changed much in 150 years, the office chair has come a long way. We could say that it has evolved.

Slowly, over time, Darwin’s office chair shed its upholstery and covered itself with faux leather because it knew that leather would one day be a classier look in offices. The chair continued to slowly evolve over time, adding a reclining feature, a height adjustment lever, and a high-back option; in what can only be described as a miracle, Darwin’s chair traded in its four wooden legs for a central leg with protruding wheels, which would allow it to better fit under desks.

Sound impossible? That’s because it is. Even Darwin himself would realize how far fetched it is to believe that his primitive chair would adapt itself on its own, regardless of the amount of time involved. The truth is, each of the improvements made to the office chair were made on purpose by intelligent people who saw ways to make it better. We call that intelligent design.   

There is not a rational person on the planet that would believe a chair adapted itself on its own, so why do we believe that living beings far more complex than furniture have done the same? The more we look at the created universe, the more we see intelligent design, not random chance. God is that Intelligent Designer who made all things exactly as they should be.

All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

John 1:3