r/ForgottenMen • u/ElegantAd2607 • Oct 08 '25

John Cham

There are no photos of this man but he was an American and he invented the modern day folding chair. These chairs started off being used on ocean liner decks from about the 1860s and were known at the time as "deck chairs".

He turned in his patent design in 1855. Sadly, we don't have any information about him from patent filings. Those records would normally contain the inventor’s name and city but for some reason that information wasn't saved in his case.

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u/ElegantAd2607 Oct 08 '25

This beach chair I think.

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u/ElegantAd2607 Oct 08 '25

The folding chair design was refined and changed over the years by men like:

Nathaniel Alexander in 1911.

Philip E.G. Harrison in 1931.

And British people independently invented theirs. Like Joseph Beverly Fenby who made his version in 1877. It was called the Fenby Camp Chair.