The portable desk has not one but many forms. In a sense, the portable desk is a long-lost ancestor of the portable computer, and the modern laptop could be considered an atavistic grandchild of the 19th-century Lap desk.
Read more about Portable Desk: Medieval and Renaissance Portables, Varguenos and Bible Boxes and Other Chests, Ubiquity Kills Off The Portables, Survival of A Few Portables
Famous quotes containing the words portable and/or desk:
““Wotever is, is right, as the young nobleman sveetly remarked wen they put him down in the pension list ‘cos his mother’s uncle’s vife’s grandfather vunce lit the king’s pipe vith a portable tinder-box.””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)