Who invented the bed?

From Sir James Paget’s first mattress to the evolutions of Heinrich Westphal, discover the evolution of the bed.

The history of the bed, from the first sleeping systems used in ancient Egypt to those of Greek and Roman times, the birth of the first spring mattress and the water mattress, the evolution of the bed up to modern times.

Sleeping in antiquity, the first beds in history

The earliest sources available to us that testify to the existence of the bed date back to ancient Egypt. At that time, a rectangular wooden frame without legs was used for sleeping and the inside was made from palm leaves, straw and animal skins to make it soft; the frame was decorated with sacred animal depictions.

At the same time, in 3600 BC, the Persians used beds made of goatskins filled with water to sleep.

A few decades later in Greece the tricliniar bed was born, a wooden structure that was used for resting, feasting and exposing the dead, enriched with bronze ornaments, it was later adopted and improved in Ancient Rome, a slightly lower and longer structure, sacks filled with hay and wool or birds’ feathers were used as a mattress, its name was ‘fulcrum’.

In the mediaeval period, the bed had a rather high structure, which is why a stool was used next to it, the reason for the height was due to poor hygienic conditions and the presence of rats in the dwellings.

This period also saw the introduction of the four-poster bed, a canonical bed and four rectangular pillars supporting a structure of curtains and drapes. This type of bed became popular for two main reasons, to stylishly decorate the large bedrooms of the nobility and to protect against insects at night.

In the evolution of the bed, how can we fail to mention Leonardo Da Vinci’s bed, a bed with a round structure, with a radius equal to the side of the square of the golden section, which was supposed to rotate over the course of the year by 360° to coincide with the earth’s motions.

 

The first mattress of the modern era, the invention of Heinrich Westphal

So who invented the bed? If we are talking about the first sleeping systems then we can refer to the Persians and the Egyptians, but if we are referring to the modern bed then the invention is attributed to the German Heinrich Westphal, who in 1871 invented the first sprung mattress, which is still in use today.

In 1873 Sir James Paget proposed the first water mattress, the evolution of the Persian mattress almost 5000 years later.

For almost sixty years, the spring mattress was the rage, until the first rubber latex mattress was invented in 1928 by John Boyd Dunlop. In 1935, the first synthetic foam mattress was born, an ergonomic mattress that adapts to the contours and shapes of the body, aligning the spine in the best possible way.

In 1966, two scientists, Chiharu Kubokawa and Charles A. Yost, developed synthetic polyurethane foam at the Ames Research Center laboratories, from which memory foam mattresses and anti-decubitus mattresses were developed. The latter are used in the medical field to prevent bedsores in patients confined to bed for long periods.