The centripetal spring ("leaning-back") office chair seems to have been invented by an American in 1849. It has been claimed that it didn't take off immediately because of purported "Victorian" ideas about it being "too comfortable". How true is this?

by NMW

I'm basically hoping to interrogate the claims of a Wikipedia article, here. It seems to be presenting a very stereotypical view of the Victorians as a harsh and stodgy people, but all of this seems rather far-fetched to me -- especially in an American context.

Who can tell me what was really going on here?

taskblaster

One problem is that the article mistakenly cites Olivares (2011) as its source via Slate magazine. The correct source is actually Pynt and Higgs' "Nineteenth Century Patent Seating: Too Comfortable to be Moral?" in the Journal of Design History. Pynt and Higgs also wrote a book titled A History of Seating, 3000 BC to 2000 AD: Function Versus Aesthetics. Chapter six covers the Victorian era