The Original Forms of Mattress Sizes
In 1590, a furniture maker in the English town of Ware built a bed so massive it could sleep eight adults. Carved from oak and standing over eight feet wide, the Great Bed of Ware was not designed for comfort — it was built to be a spectacle. Travelers on the road between London and Cambridge would pay to spend a night in it, then carve their initials into the posts as proof. Shakespeare mentioned it in Twelfth Night . Ben Jonson wrote about it. For three centuries, it was the most famous piece of furniture in England. Today it sits in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, a relic from an era when bed sizes had nothing to do with standardization and everything to do with status. The story of how we got from that 10-foot-11-inch curiosity to the precise 60-by-80-inch queen mattress sitting in millions of American bedrooms is stranger than most people realize. It involves a revolution in manufacturing, a famous hotel chain, and a furniture merchant in postwar Los Angeles who decided...