Academic Repose

As the world's largest manufacturer of bowling and billiard equipment, Chicago's Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. long ago found it profitable to spruce up bowling alleys and poolrooms, help turn them into recreation halls fit for schoolchildren. Last week Brunswick-Balke went into the classroom itself; it began making a line of school furniture.

Brunswick found that the U.S. spends $100 million a year equipping its schools with furniture, and that there are only a handful of major manufacturers in the field. It spent $1,000,000 on a complete line of desks, chairs and tables made of plywood, with tapered, tubular steel legs. The chairs have comfortable seats and backs, come with a dozen different types of arm rests. The tables have 25 basic parts, which can be used to assemble 130 tables of various sizes, heights and shapes. To solve the schools' storage problem, the chairs stack easily, the tables nest.

As a furniture maker, Brunswick has already passed its first exam. On order is $500,000 worth of furniture for 25 new schools. By next year Brunswick expects to be ready to turn out $5,000,000 worth of school furnishings a year.

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