Telephone desk
Encyclopedia
The telephone desk is the smallest kind of fixed desk
Desk
A desk is a furniture form and a class of table often used in a work or office setting for reading or writing on or using a computer. Desks often have one or more drawers to store office supplies and papers. Unlike a regular table, usually only one side of a desk is suitable to sit on . Not all...

. Its traditional role is to provide a working surface barely large enough to write notes while speaking on the telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

, and in some cases to support the telephone or hold telephone books. In early generations of telephones the phone apparatus itself had a small desk built-in. This was most common in wall mounted telephones of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

The illustrations show front and side views of such an antique wall phone with a small slanted desk surface fitted with two ridges to keep paper and pencil from falling to the floor.
The telephone desk has usually been a domestic piece of furniture. In an office
Office
An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the...

 a telephone would normally be placed on any form of desk, as close as possible to its users.

In the last fifty years of the 20th century a domestic telephone desk would usually be placed next to a phone located in an entryway or a small lobby. With the widespread use of the cellular telephone and the portable phone, which permit complete liberty of movement and make note-taking possible on any table or desk in a home, the telephone desk is rapidly becoming an antique form.

In the past any telephone booth
Telephone booth
A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box or telephone box is a small structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience. In the USA, Canada and Australia, "telephone booth" is used, while in the UK and the rest of the Commonwealth it is a "telephone...

 or call box used to have a tiny built-in desk surface for the convenience of customers. An increase in vandalism and a higher concern for costs has led to the gradual elimination of these minuscule desk surfaces.

See also the list of desk forms and types.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK