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Education is a technology, a production system whose elements comprise material, linguistic and conceptual inventions. This multi-dimensional sense of educational technology is useful whenever attempts are made to understand educational practice. To this end, my paper examines a small corner of the historical or technological record, "patents of invention", a set of sources that has seldom, if ever, been used in English-language histories of education. To evaluate this source, my attention focuses on the "abridgements", published between 1855 and 1930, where patent applications were grouped according to their use (e.g. as "furniture" or "stationery"); and the diversity of these records will be illustrated by reference to an invention--the school desk--that was prominent over the same period. (Contains 2 figures and 11 footnotes.)

This paper discusses the need for wider reform of UK chemicals policy following exit of the UK from the EU, focusing on chemical flame retardants as an example. Exposure to these chemicals presents a range of human environmental health issues and reveals important limitations in the UK's approach to reconciling fire safety with environmental and public health protections. Key strategic issues that would advance evidence-informed policy in this area are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Evidence suggests that standards for resistance of furniture to ignition may lead to an increase in use of chemical flame retardants (CFRs). This is motivating the development of new approaches that maintain high levels of fire safety while facilitating a reduction in use of CFRs. However, reconciling potential fire risk with use of CFRs in relation to specific policy objectives is challenging. Objectives: To inform the development of a new policy in the UK for the fire safety of furniture, we developed for domestic furniture quantitative models of fire risk and potential for CFR exposure. We then combined the models to determine if any lower fire risk, higher CFR exposure categories of furniture were identifiable. Methods: We applied a novel mixed-methods approach to modelling furniture fire risk and CFR exposure in a data-poor environment, using literature-based concept mapping, qualitative research, and data visualisation methods to generate fire risk and CFR exposure models and derive furniture product rankings. Results: Our analysis suggests there exists a cluster of furniture types including baby and infant products and pillows that have comparable overall properties in terms of lower fire risk and higher potential for CFR exposure. Discussion: There are multiple obstacles to reconciling fire risk and CFR use in furniture. In particular, these include a lack of empirical data that would allow absolute fire risk and exposure levels to be quantified. Nonetheless, it seems that our modelling method can potentially yield meaningful product clusters, providing a basis for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London's Tottenham Court Road has long been associated with the furniture business, but had its heyday between 1850 and 1950. This paper considers the furniture business in this street through a mix of retail business history and urban geography. It will attempt to show why this particular 'furniture street' developed as it did. Considerations of the networks or clusters of businesses associated with furniture-making assist in the analysis. The nature of the furniture industry and trade in the immediate area and the history of particular stores in the street as exemplars of the processes are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses fire statistics to show the importance of fire toxicity on fire deaths and injuries, and the importance of upholstered furniture and bedding on fatalities from unwanted fires. The aim was to compare the fire hazards (fire growth and smoke toxicity) using different upholstery materials. Four compositions of sofa-bed were compared: three meeting UK Furniture Flammability Regulations (FFR), and one using materials without flame retardants intended for the mainland European market. Two of the UK sofa-beds relied on chemical flame retardants to meet the FFR, the third used natural materials and a technical weave in order to pass the test. Each composition was tested in the bench-scale cone calorimeter (ISO 5660) and burnt as a whole sofa-bed in a sofa configuration in a 3.4 × 2.25 × 2.4 m 3 test room. All of the sofas were ignited with a No. 7 wood crib; the temperatures and yields of toxic products are reported. The sofa-beds containing flame retardants burnt somewhat more slowly than the non-flame retarded EU sofa-bed, but in doing so produced significantly greater quantities of the main fire toxicants, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. Assessment of the effluents’ potential to incapacitate and kill is provided showing the two UK flame retardant sofa-beds to be the most dangerous, followed by the sofa-bed made with European materials. The UK sofa-bed made only from natural materials (Cottonsafe ® ) burnt very slowly and produced very low concentrations of toxic gases. Including fire toxicity in the FFR would reduce the chemical flame retardants and improve fire safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There have been approximately 400 third sector organisations set up across the UK since the 1970s with the primary function of collecting used furniture and electrical appliances and re-distributing them for the relief of hardship. In addition to the resulting socio-economic outputs of these organisations, their role in diverting waste from landfill and increasing re-use and recycling rates raises their standing in the current political climate of high emphasis on improving waste management practices. This paper reports on the current size of the furniture and appliance re-use sector, how re-use organisations operate, and the level of re-use and recycling associated with their activities. It was found that significant improvements in the re-use rate of local authority bulky waste collection services may be obtained if a third sector re-use organisation takes over the service; where re-use organisations collect household bulky waste on behalf of the LA, a 40% re-use rate was achieved, compared to the 2–3% average of waste collection departments. In most areas of the UK, these two sectors are not well integrated at present and this results in potentially re-usable items being disposed of to landfill or incinerated. Establishing partnerships between the two sectors has the potential to benefit both but this will probably require system and culture changes. A significant current barrier is that LA waste management departments are hampered by the current (well-intended) quantitative waste management system coming into conflict with the unquantified, positive social value generated by the distribution of previously used bulky household items to disadvantaged groups by re-use organisations. If added to the environmental improvements and high quality of service provided by third sector-run services, the effort involved in setting up such partnerships may be regarded more favourably. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Anyone with an interest in early and mid-twentieth century design will be familiar with the name John Gloag. An author of almost sixty books, with topics ranging from interiors to furniture history, from industrial design to the use of plastics, Gloag was a member of an elite design culture that was highly visible throughout the 1930s and 40s, and which included figures such as Noel Carrington, Gordon Russell, Frank Pick, and many others. Although an ardent reformist with links to a number of prestigious institutions, including the RIBA, the RSA, the DIA and the CoID, Gloag's contribution to design reform, and to an understanding of a national design tradition, has attracted little scholarly interest. This essay discusses several of Gloag's texts, covering the period 1934-1946, and examines the author's views on design identity and reform, furniture design, and modern design in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a unique study of the material form of the television receiver between the 1930s and 1960s. Very little has been written to date on the history of the television set as an artefact. Yet its design and appearance played a major role in the acceptance of television in the home. The meanings of television sets are explored, from the design of wooden cabinets as family furniture to the shaping of portable sets as symbols of progress. A case study of British events is conducted, with reference made to American and other nations’ developments in so far as they relate to Britain's television receiver history. The article confirms that the material form of the television receiver contributed to a narrative of domesticity and progress by reconfiguring the relationship between home and communication technology. The fusion of craft and futurist ideas in design reflected tensions about the receiver as an expression of traditional domestic values, of progress and modernity, and as an icon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the advent of twin beds as a common sleeping arrangement for English couples. Through an analysis of a range of sources from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries—marketing materials, advertisements, domestic, decorative and marital advice books and novels and films—it argues that while twin beds were initially recommended by proponents of the domestic sanitation movement as part of a raft of hygiene measures, by the 1920s they had become a fashionable item of bedroom furniture for modern couples in ‘companionate’ marriages. It was in this context that Marie Stopes, in her popular marital advice books, railed against them as an ‘invention of the devil’, symptomatic of the evils of modernity, and endangering the happiness of the modern married couple. The article concludes that, despite these changing contexts of consumption, the significance of the history of twin beds needs to be understood through the intersecting discourses of domesticity, health and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines strategies used by durable goods retailers to create a mass market in interwar Britain, via a case study of domestic furniture. Interwar demand for new furniture witnessed particularly rapid growth—mainly owing to the extension of the market to lower-income groups. A number of innovative national retailers developed liberal hire purchase (HP) facilities in order to bring furniture within the economic reach of these groups, while sophisticated national advertising campaigns were used both to legitimize the buying of furniture on HP and to project the idea that furnishing by this means was key to achieving the type of aspirational lifestyles being promulgated in the popular media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the role of design in the British furniture industry between the period of 1939 and 1965. It states that the distinctive contrast in the period highlights the effects of severe restrictions imposed by the Utility scheme, rationing, and the regulation of furniture design by law. Accordingly, the furniture trade was the only sector of industry in the country to be subjected to design by dictate as part of the programme of rationalization introduced during the war, and for the longer-term planned modernization. It reveals that the stage in the history of furniture is described by higher awareness of design brought about by the interventions from the Board of Trade for a competitive market.