With the advent of railroad transportation in the mid-19th century, businesses began to grow beyond the traditional, family-oriented, business model. Additional administrative staff was needed to track orders and bookkeeping as companies expanded their areas of activity.
As office work grew, an awareness of the office environment, technology, and equipment became an integral part of the cultural drive to increase productivity. This realization has given rise to office chairs specially designed for these new administrative employees.
But the first chair with wheels was designed away from the offices and the administrative ones, indeed, one of the first known innovators to have created the modern office chair is the naturalist Charles Darwin , whose work on the evolution of the species have revolutionized biology. Although he spent many years traveling the world collecting specimens, he had to sit down one day to study them. The office chairs were not invented yet, he had the idea of placing casters on his chair which allowed him to work faster.