ratio of word probabilities predicted from brain for chimney and desk

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chimney

desk

top 10 words in brain distribution (in article):
water form wood build wall type structure wind floor construction top 10 words in brain distribution (in article):
wood build wall design size structure light surface type frame

top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article):
material surface ice rock paint size river tree sea ocean top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article):
material paint construction window floor tree door plastic roof brick

times more probable under chimney 30 20 10 6 4 2.5 1.25 1 1.25 2.5 4 6 10 20 30 times more probable under desk
(words not in the model)

A chimney'" is a structure for venting hot flue gases or smoke from a boiler, stove, furnace or fireplace to the outside atmosphere. Chimneys are typically vertical, or as near as possible to vertical, to ensure that the gases flow smoothly, drawing air into the combustion in what is known as the stack, or chimney, effect. The space inside a chimney is called a "flue". Chimneys may be found in buildings, steam locomotives and ships. In the US, the term smokestack'" (colloquially, "'stack'") is also used when referring to locomotive chimneys. The term "'funnel'" is generally used for ships' chimneys and sometimes to refer to locomotive chimneys.. Chimneys are tall to increase their draw of air for combustion and to disperse pollutants in the flue gases over a greater area so as to reduce the pollutant concentrations in compliance with regulatory or other limits. History. Romans used tubes inside the walls to draw smoke out of bakeries but real chimneys appeared only in northern Europe in the 12th century. Industrial chimneys became common in the late 18th century. The earliest extant example of an English chimney is at Conisborough Keep in Yorkshire, which dates from 1185 AD. Chimneys have traditionally been built of brick, both in small and large buildings. Early chimneys were of a simple brick construction. Later chimneys were constructed by placing the bricks around tile liners. To control downdrafts venting caps (often called "chimney pots") with a variety of designs are sometimes placed on the top of chimneys. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the methods used to extract lead from its ore produced large amounts of toxic fumes. In the north of England, long near-horizontal chimneys were built, often more than 3 km (2 mi) long, which typically terminated in a short vertical chimney in a remote location where the fumes would cause less harm. Lead and silver deposits formed on the inside of these long chimneys, and periodically workers would be sent along the chimneys to scrape off these valuable deposits. Construction. Due to brick's limited ability to handle transverse loads, chimneys in houses were often built in a "stack", with a fireplace on each floor of the house sharing a single chimney, often with such a stack at the front and back of the house. Today's central heating systems have made chimney placement less critical, and the use of non-structural gas vent pipe allows a flue gas conduit to be installed around obstructions and through walls. In fact, many modern high-efficiency heating appliances do not require a chimney. Such appliances are typically installed near an outside wall, and a noncombustible wall thimble allows vent pipe to be run directly through the outside wall. Industrial chimneys are commonly referred to as flue gas stacks and are typically external structures, as opposed to being built into the wall of a building. They are generally located adjacent to a steam-generating boiler or industrial furnace and the gases are carried to it with ductwork. Today the use of reinforced concrete has almost entirely replaced brick as a structural component in the construction of industrial chimneys. Refractory bricks are often used as a lining, particularly if the type of fuel being burned generates flue gases containing acids. Modern industrial chimneys sometimes consist of a concrete windshield with a number of flues on the inside. The 300 metre chimney at Sasol Three consists of a 26 metre diameter windshield with four 4.6 metre diameter concrete flues which are lined with refractory bricks built on rings of corbels spaced at 10 metre intervals. The reinforced concrete can be cast by conventional formwork or sliding formwork. The height is to ensure the pollutants are dispersed over a wider area to meet legislative or safety requirements. Chimney tops. A chimney pot is placed on top of the chimney to inexpensively extend the length of the chimney, and to improve the chimney's draft. A chimney with more than one pot on it indicates that there is more than one fireplace on different floors sharing the chimney. A chimney cowl is placed on top of the chimney to prevent birds and squirrels from nesting in the chimney. They often feature a rain guard to keep rain from going down the chimney. A metal wire mesh is often used as a spark arrestor to minimize burning debris from rising out of the chimney and making it onto the roof. Although the masonry inside the chimney can absorb a large amount of moisture which later evaporates, rainwater can collect at the base of the chimney. Sometimes weep holes are placed at the bottom of the chimney to drain out collected water. A chimney cowl or wind directional cap is helmet shaped chimney cap that rotates to align with the wind and prevent a backdraft of smoke and wind back down the chimney. An H-style cap'" (cowl) is a chimney top constructed from chimney pipes shaped like the letter H. It is an age old method to regulate draft in situations where prevailing winds or turbulences cause down draft and backpuffing. Although the "'H cap'" has a distinctive advantage over most other downdraft caps, it fell out of favor because of it bulky looks. It is found mainly in marine use but has been gaining popularity again due to its energy saving functionality. The "'H-cap stabilizes the draft rather than increasing it. Other down draft caps are based on the Venturi effect, solving downdraft problems by increasing the up draft constantly resulting in much higher fuel consumption. A chimney damper is a metal spring door placed at the top of the chimney with a long metal chain that allows you to open and close the chimney from the fireplace. In the late Middle Ages in Western Europe the design of crow-stepped gables arose to allow maintenance access to the chimney top, especially for tall structures such as castles and great manor houses. Chimney draught or draft. When coal, oil, natural gas, wood or any other fuel is combusted in a stove, oven, fireplace, hot water boiler or industrial furnace, the hot combustion product gases that are formed are called flue gases. Those gases are generally exhausted to the ambient outside air through chimneys or industrial flue gas stacks (sometimes referred to as smokestacks). The combustion flue gases inside the chimneys or stacks are much hotter than the ambient outside air and therefore less dense than the ambient air. That causes the bottom of the vertical column of hot flue gas to have a lower pressure than the pressure at the bottom of a corresponding column of outside air. That higher pressure outside the chimney is the driving force that moves the required combustion air into the combustion zone and also moves the flue gas up and out of the chimney. That movement or flow of combustion air and flue gas is called "natural draught draft", "natural ventilation", "chimney effect", or "stack effect". The taller the stack, the more draught or draft is created. Designing chimneys and stacks to provide the correct amount of natural draught or draft involves a number design factors, many of which require trial-and-error reiterative methods. As a "first guess" approximation, the following equation can be used to estimate the natural draught draft flow rate by assuming that the molecular mass (i.e., molecular weight) of the flue gas and the external air are equal and that the frictional pressure and heat losses are negligible: Drawbacks. A characteristic problem of chimneys is they develop deposits of creosote on the walls of the structure when used with wood as a fuel. Some types of wood, such as pine, generate more creosote than others. Deposits of this substance can interfere with the airflow and more importantly, they are flammable and can cause dangerous chimney fires if the deposits ignite in the chimney. Thus, it is recommended — and in some countries even mandatory — that chimneys be inspected annually and cleaned on a regular basis to prevent these problems. The workers who perform this task professionally are called chimney sweeps. In the middle ages in some parts of Europe, a crow-stepped gable design was developed, partially to provide access to chimneys without use of ladders. Masonry (brick) chimneys have also proved particularly susceptible to crumbling during earthquakes. Government housing authorities in quake-prone cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles now recommend building new homes with stud-framed chimneys around a metal flue. Bracing or strapping old masonry chimneys has not proved to be very effective in preventing damage or injury from earthquakes. Perhaps predictably, a new industry provides "faux-brick" facades to cover these modern chimney structures. Other problems include "spalling" brick, 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 (though there are some unusual exceptions, such as a partners desk). Not all desks have the form of a table. For instance, an Armoire desk is a desk built within a large wardrobe-like cabinet, and a portable desk is light enough to be placed on a person's lap. Early desks. Desk-style furniture appears not to have been used in classical antiquity or in other ancient centers of civilization in the Middle East or Far East, but there is no specific proof. Medieval illustrations show the first pieces of furniture which seem to have been designed and constructed for reading and writing. Before the invention of the movable type printing press in the 15th century, any reader was potentially a writer or publisher or both, since any book or other document had to be copied by hand. The desks were designed with slots and hooks for bookmarks and for writing implements. Since manuscript volumes were sometimes large, and heavy, desks of the period usually had massive structures. Desks of the Renaissance and later eras had relatively slimmer structures, and more and more drawers as woodworking became more precise and cabinet-making became a distinct trade. It is often possible to find out if a table or other piece of furniture of those times was designed to be used as a desk by looking for a drawer with three small separations (one each for the ink pot, the blotter and the powder tray) and room for the pens. The desk forms we are familiar with in this beginning of the millennium were born mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The ergonomic desk of the last decades is the newest addition to a long list of desk forms, but in a way it is only a refinement of the mechanically complex drawing table or drafting table of the end of the 18th century. Industrial era. Refinements to those first desk forms were considerable through the 19th century, as steam-driven machinery made cheap wood-based paper possible in the last periods of the first phase of the industrial revolution. This produced a boom in the number of, or some might say the birth of, the white-collar worker. As these office workers grew in number, desks were mass-produced for them in large quantities, using newer, steam-driven woodworking machinery. This was the first sharp division in desk manufacturing. From then on, limited quantities of finely crafted desks have been constructed by master cabinetmakers for the homes and offices of the rich while the vast majority of desks were assembled rapidly by unskilled labor, from components turned out in batches by machine tools. Thus, age alone does not guarantee that an antique desk is a masterpiece, since this shift took place more than a hundred years ago. More paper and more correspondence drove the need for more complex desks and more specialized desks, such as the rolltop desk which was a mass produced, slatted variant of the classical cylinder desk. It provided a relatively fast and cheap way to lock up the ever increasing flow of paper without having to file everything by the end of the day. Paper documents started leaving the desk as a "home," with the general introduction of filing cabinets. Correspondence and other documents were now too numerous to get enough attention to be rolled up or folded again, then summarized and tagged before being pigeonholed in a small compartment over or under the work surface of the desk. The famous Wooton desk and others were the last manifestations of the "pigeonhole" style. The newer desks could be transformed into many different shapes and angles and were ideal for artists. Steel desks. A smaller boom in office work and desk production occurred at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th with the introduction of smaller and cheaper electrical presses and efficient carbon papers coupled with the general acceptance of the typewriter. Steel desks were introduced to take heavier loads of paper and withstand the pounding meted out on the typewriters. The L-shaped desk became popular, with the "leg" being used as an annex for the typewriter. Another big boom occurred after the Second World War with the spread of photocopying. Paperwork drove even higher the number of desk workers, whose work surface diminished in size as office rents rose, and the paper itself was moved more and more directly to filing cabinets or sent to records management centers, or transformed into microfilm, or both. Modular desks seating several co-workers close by became common. Even executive or management desks became mass-produced, built of cheap plywood or fiberboard covered with wood veneer, as the number of persons managing the white collar workers became even greater. Student desks. A "'student desk'" can be any desk form meant for use by a student. Usually the term designates a small pedestal desk or writing table constructed for use by a teenager or a pre-teen in his or her room at home. More often than not it is a pedestal desk, with only one of the two pedestals and about two thirds of the desk surface. Such desks are sometimes called left pedestal desks or right pedestal desks depending on the position of the single pedestal. The height of the desk is usually a bit lower than is the case for normal adult desks. In some cases, the desk is connected from the seat to the table. The table is also used for sitting before classes. The desks are usually mass-produced in steel or wood and sold on the consumer market. In addition there is a wide variety of plans available for woodworking enthusiasts. There are many novel forms of student desks made to maximize the relatively restricted area available in a child's room. One of the most common is the bunk bed desk, also known as a loft bed. Impact of computers. Until the late 1980s desks remained a place for paperwork and business negotiation. At the end of this decade though the personal computer was taking hold in large and medium sized businesses. New office suites included a "knee hole" credenza which was a place for a terminal or personal computer and keyboard tray. Soon new office designs also included "U-shape" suites which added a bridge worksurface between the back credenza and front desk. During the North American recession of the early 1990s, many manager and executive workers had to do word processing and other functions previously completed by typing pools and secretaries. This necessitated a more central placement of the computer on these "U-shape" suite desk systems. With computers abounding, "computer paper" became an office staple. The beginning of this paper boom gave birth to the dream of the "paperless office", in which all information would appear on computer monitors. However, the ease of printing personal documents and the lack of comfort with reading text on computer monitors led to a great deal of document printing. The need for paperwork space vied with the rising desk space taken up by computer monitors, CPUs, printers, scanners, and other peripherals. As well, the need for more space led some desk companies to attach some items to the modesty panel at the back of the desk, such as multi-outlets and cabling. Through the "tech boom" of the 1990s, office worker numbers skyrocketed along with the cost of office space rent. The cubicle desk became widely accepted in North America as an economical way of putting more desk workers in the same space without actually shrinking the size of their working surfaces. The cubicle walls have become new place for workers to affix papers and other items once left on the horizontal desktop surface. Even computer monitor frames themselves are used to attach reminder notes and business cards. Early in the 2000s, private office workers found that their side and back computer-placing furniture made it hard to show the contents of a computer screen to guests or co-workers. Manufacturers have responded to this issue by creating "Forward Facing" desks where computer monitors are placed on the front of the "U-shape" workstation. This forward computer monitor placement promotes a clearer sight-line to greet colleagues, increases computer screen privacy and allows for common viewing of information displayed on a screen. References. Articles and books on real and virtual desks and things in between:

chimney	desk
top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): water form wood build wall type structure wind floor construction	top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): wood build wall design size structure light surface type frame
top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): material surface ice rock paint size river tree sea ocean	top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): material paint construction window floor tree door plastic roof brick
times more probable under chimney 30 20 10 6 4 2.5 1.25 1 1.25 2.5 4 6 10 20 30 times more probable under desk (words not in the model)
A chimney'" is a structure for venting hot flue gases or smoke from a boiler, stove, furnace or fireplace to the outside atmosphere. Chimneys are typically vertical, or as near as possible to vertical, to ensure that the gases flow smoothly, drawing air into the combustion in what is known as the stack, or chimney, effect. The space inside a chimney is called a "flue". Chimneys may be found in buildings, steam locomotives and ships. In the US, the term smokestack'" (colloquially, "'stack'") is also used when referring to locomotive chimneys. The term "'funnel'" is generally used for ships' chimneys and sometimes to refer to locomotive chimneys.. Chimneys are tall to increase their draw of air for combustion and to disperse pollutants in the flue gases over a greater area so as to reduce the pollutant concentrations in compliance with regulatory or other limits. History. Romans used tubes inside the walls to draw smoke out of bakeries but real chimneys appeared only in northern Europe in the 12th century. Industrial chimneys became common in the late 18th century. The earliest extant example of an English chimney is at Conisborough Keep in Yorkshire, which dates from 1185 AD. Chimneys have traditionally been built of brick, both in small and large buildings. Early chimneys were of a simple brick construction. Later chimneys were constructed by placing the bricks around tile liners. To control downdrafts venting caps (often called "chimney pots") with a variety of designs are sometimes placed on the top of chimneys. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the methods used to extract lead from its ore produced large amounts of toxic fumes. In the north of England, long near-horizontal chimneys were built, often more than 3 km (2 mi) long, which typically terminated in a short vertical chimney in a remote location where the fumes would cause less harm. Lead and silver deposits formed on the inside of these long chimneys, and periodically workers would be sent along the chimneys to scrape off these valuable deposits. Construction. Due to brick's limited ability to handle transverse loads, chimneys in houses were often built in a "stack", with a fireplace on each floor of the house sharing a single chimney, often with such a stack at the front and back of the house. Today's central heating systems have made chimney placement less critical, and the use of non-structural gas vent pipe allows a flue gas conduit to be installed around obstructions and through walls. In fact, many modern high-efficiency heating appliances do not require a chimney. Such appliances are typically installed near an outside wall, and a noncombustible wall thimble allows vent pipe to be run directly through the outside wall. Industrial chimneys are commonly referred to as flue gas stacks and are typically external structures, as opposed to being built into the wall of a building. They are generally located adjacent to a steam-generating boiler or industrial furnace and the gases are carried to it with ductwork. Today the use of reinforced concrete has almost entirely replaced brick as a structural component in the construction of industrial chimneys. Refractory bricks are often used as a lining, particularly if the type of fuel being burned generates flue gases containing acids. Modern industrial chimneys sometimes consist of a concrete windshield with a number of flues on the inside. The 300 metre chimney at Sasol Three consists of a 26 metre diameter windshield with four 4.6 metre diameter concrete flues which are lined with refractory bricks built on rings of corbels spaced at 10 metre intervals. The reinforced concrete can be cast by conventional formwork or sliding formwork. The height is to ensure the pollutants are dispersed over a wider area to meet legislative or safety requirements. Chimney tops. A chimney pot is placed on top of the chimney to inexpensively extend the length of the chimney, and to improve the chimney's draft. A chimney with more than one pot on it indicates that there is more than one fireplace on different floors sharing the chimney. A chimney cowl is placed on top of the chimney to prevent birds and squirrels from nesting in the chimney. They often feature a rain guard to keep rain from going down the chimney. A metal wire mesh is often used as a spark arrestor to minimize burning debris from rising out of the chimney and making it onto the roof. Although the masonry inside the chimney can absorb a large amount of moisture which later evaporates, rainwater can collect at the base of the chimney. Sometimes weep holes are placed at the bottom of the chimney to drain out collected water. A chimney cowl or wind directional cap is helmet shaped chimney cap that rotates to align with the wind and prevent a backdraft of smoke and wind back down the chimney. An H-style cap'" (cowl) is a chimney top constructed from chimney pipes shaped like the letter H. It is an age old method to regulate draft in situations where prevailing winds or turbulences cause down draft and backpuffing. Although the "'H cap'" has a distinctive advantage over most other downdraft caps, it fell out of favor because of it bulky looks. It is found mainly in marine use but has been gaining popularity again due to its energy saving functionality. The "'H-cap stabilizes the draft rather than increasing it. Other down draft caps are based on the Venturi effect, solving downdraft problems by increasing the up draft constantly resulting in much higher fuel consumption. A chimney damper is a metal spring door placed at the top of the chimney with a long metal chain that allows you to open and close the chimney from the fireplace. In the late Middle Ages in Western Europe the design of crow-stepped gables arose to allow maintenance access to the chimney top, especially for tall structures such as castles and great manor houses. Chimney draught or draft. When coal, oil, natural gas, wood or any other fuel is combusted in a stove, oven, fireplace, hot water boiler or industrial furnace, the hot combustion product gases that are formed are called flue gases. Those gases are generally exhausted to the ambient outside air through chimneys or industrial flue gas stacks (sometimes referred to as smokestacks). The combustion flue gases inside the chimneys or stacks are much hotter than the ambient outside air and therefore less dense than the ambient air. That causes the bottom of the vertical column of hot flue gas to have a lower pressure than the pressure at the bottom of a corresponding column of outside air. That higher pressure outside the chimney is the driving force that moves the required combustion air into the combustion zone and also moves the flue gas up and out of the chimney. That movement or flow of combustion air and flue gas is called "natural draught draft", "natural ventilation", "chimney effect", or "stack effect". The taller the stack, the more draught or draft is created. Designing chimneys and stacks to provide the correct amount of natural draught or draft involves a number design factors, many of which require trial-and-error reiterative methods. As a "first guess" approximation, the following equation can be used to estimate the natural draught draft flow rate by assuming that the molecular mass (i.e., molecular weight) of the flue gas and the external air are equal and that the frictional pressure and heat losses are negligible: Drawbacks. A characteristic problem of chimneys is they develop deposits of creosote on the walls of the structure when used with wood as a fuel. Some types of wood, such as pine, generate more creosote than others. Deposits of this substance can interfere with the airflow and more importantly, they are flammable and can cause dangerous chimney fires if the deposits ignite in the chimney. Thus, it is recommended — and in some countries even mandatory — that chimneys be inspected annually and cleaned on a regular basis to prevent these problems. The workers who perform this task professionally are called chimney sweeps. In the middle ages in some parts of Europe, a crow-stepped gable design was developed, partially to provide access to chimneys without use of ladders. Masonry (brick) chimneys have also proved particularly susceptible to crumbling during earthquakes. Government housing authorities in quake-prone cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles now recommend building new homes with stud-framed chimneys around a metal flue. Bracing or strapping old masonry chimneys has not proved to be very effective in preventing damage or injury from earthquakes. Perhaps predictably, a new industry provides "faux-brick" facades to cover these modern chimney structures. Other problems include "spalling" brick,	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 (though there are some unusual exceptions, such as a partners desk). Not all desks have the form of a table. For instance, an Armoire desk is a desk built within a large wardrobe-like cabinet, and a portable desk is light enough to be placed on a person's lap. Early desks. Desk-style furniture appears not to have been used in classical antiquity or in other ancient centers of civilization in the Middle East or Far East, but there is no specific proof. Medieval illustrations show the first pieces of furniture which seem to have been designed and constructed for reading and writing. Before the invention of the movable type printing press in the 15th century, any reader was potentially a writer or publisher or both, since any book or other document had to be copied by hand. The desks were designed with slots and hooks for bookmarks and for writing implements. Since manuscript volumes were sometimes large, and heavy, desks of the period usually had massive structures. Desks of the Renaissance and later eras had relatively slimmer structures, and more and more drawers as woodworking became more precise and cabinet-making became a distinct trade. It is often possible to find out if a table or other piece of furniture of those times was designed to be used as a desk by looking for a drawer with three small separations (one each for the ink pot, the blotter and the powder tray) and room for the pens. The desk forms we are familiar with in this beginning of the millennium were born mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The ergonomic desk of the last decades is the newest addition to a long list of desk forms, but in a way it is only a refinement of the mechanically complex drawing table or drafting table of the end of the 18th century. Industrial era. Refinements to those first desk forms were considerable through the 19th century, as steam-driven machinery made cheap wood-based paper possible in the last periods of the first phase of the industrial revolution. This produced a boom in the number of, or some might say the birth of, the white-collar worker. As these office workers grew in number, desks were mass-produced for them in large quantities, using newer, steam-driven woodworking machinery. This was the first sharp division in desk manufacturing. From then on, limited quantities of finely crafted desks have been constructed by master cabinetmakers for the homes and offices of the rich while the vast majority of desks were assembled rapidly by unskilled labor, from components turned out in batches by machine tools. Thus, age alone does not guarantee that an antique desk is a masterpiece, since this shift took place more than a hundred years ago. More paper and more correspondence drove the need for more complex desks and more specialized desks, such as the rolltop desk which was a mass produced, slatted variant of the classical cylinder desk. It provided a relatively fast and cheap way to lock up the ever increasing flow of paper without having to file everything by the end of the day. Paper documents started leaving the desk as a "home," with the general introduction of filing cabinets. Correspondence and other documents were now too numerous to get enough attention to be rolled up or folded again, then summarized and tagged before being pigeonholed in a small compartment over or under the work surface of the desk. The famous Wooton desk and others were the last manifestations of the "pigeonhole" style. The newer desks could be transformed into many different shapes and angles and were ideal for artists. Steel desks. A smaller boom in office work and desk production occurred at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th with the introduction of smaller and cheaper electrical presses and efficient carbon papers coupled with the general acceptance of the typewriter. Steel desks were introduced to take heavier loads of paper and withstand the pounding meted out on the typewriters. The L-shaped desk became popular, with the "leg" being used as an annex for the typewriter. Another big boom occurred after the Second World War with the spread of photocopying. Paperwork drove even higher the number of desk workers, whose work surface diminished in size as office rents rose, and the paper itself was moved more and more directly to filing cabinets or sent to records management centers, or transformed into microfilm, or both. Modular desks seating several co-workers close by became common. Even executive or management desks became mass-produced, built of cheap plywood or fiberboard covered with wood veneer, as the number of persons managing the white collar workers became even greater. Student desks. A "'student desk'" can be any desk form meant for use by a student. Usually the term designates a small pedestal desk or writing table constructed for use by a teenager or a pre-teen in his or her room at home. More often than not it is a pedestal desk, with only one of the two pedestals and about two thirds of the desk surface. Such desks are sometimes called left pedestal desks or right pedestal desks depending on the position of the single pedestal. The height of the desk is usually a bit lower than is the case for normal adult desks. In some cases, the desk is connected from the seat to the table. The table is also used for sitting before classes. The desks are usually mass-produced in steel or wood and sold on the consumer market. In addition there is a wide variety of plans available for woodworking enthusiasts. There are many novel forms of student desks made to maximize the relatively restricted area available in a child's room. One of the most common is the bunk bed desk, also known as a loft bed. Impact of computers. Until the late 1980s desks remained a place for paperwork and business negotiation. At the end of this decade though the personal computer was taking hold in large and medium sized businesses. New office suites included a "knee hole" credenza which was a place for a terminal or personal computer and keyboard tray. Soon new office designs also included "U-shape" suites which added a bridge worksurface between the back credenza and front desk. During the North American recession of the early 1990s, many manager and executive workers had to do word processing and other functions previously completed by typing pools and secretaries. This necessitated a more central placement of the computer on these "U-shape" suite desk systems. With computers abounding, "computer paper" became an office staple. The beginning of this paper boom gave birth to the dream of the "paperless office", in which all information would appear on computer monitors. However, the ease of printing personal documents and the lack of comfort with reading text on computer monitors led to a great deal of document printing. The need for paperwork space vied with the rising desk space taken up by computer monitors, CPUs, printers, scanners, and other peripherals. As well, the need for more space led some desk companies to attach some items to the modesty panel at the back of the desk, such as multi-outlets and cabling. Through the "tech boom" of the 1990s, office worker numbers skyrocketed along with the cost of office space rent. The cubicle desk became widely accepted in North America as an economical way of putting more desk workers in the same space without actually shrinking the size of their working surfaces. The cubicle walls have become new place for workers to affix papers and other items once left on the horizontal desktop surface. Even computer monitor frames themselves are used to attach reminder notes and business cards. Early in the 2000s, private office workers found that their side and back computer-placing furniture made it hard to show the contents of a computer screen to guests or co-workers. Manufacturers have responded to this issue by creating "Forward Facing" desks where computer monitors are placed on the front of the "U-shape" workstation. This forward computer monitor placement promotes a clearer sight-line to greet colleagues, increases computer screen privacy and allows for common viewing of information displayed on a screen. References. Articles and books on real and virtual desks and things in between: