Desk

Up until the 17th century, desks were relatively rare, luxury objects, in the West and it wasn't until the 19th century and the expansion of the modern office that desks became widely used and mass-produced with increasingly cheaper materials. Toward the end of the 19th century, the rolltop desk became a popular means to handle the massive increase in paper that was dealt with by workers on a daily basis. At the beginning of the 20th century, steel desks were introduced to handle the weight of typewriters. The invention of the desktop computer led to the addition of trays for keyboards and design solutions for managing power cords and peripherals like printers.