In his 1938 furniture encyclopedia, historian Joseph Aronson defined the coffee table as a low, wide table used before a sofa and noted it had no historical precedent. An 18th century parlor kept the middle of the room empty: servants carried small portable tables such as teapoys over when tea was served, then returned them to the walls. It took the growth of the servant-light Victorian middle class to create demand for a permanent surface in front of the sofa.

The first contender is an 1868 table by architect E.W. Godwin, manufactured by William Watt and by Collinson & Lock, which some historians call the first coffee table and other catalogs call simply a table. At 27 inches it stood nearly at dining height. The low profile came from the Anglo-Japanese craze of the 1870s and 1880s and the Japanese chabudai, after which makers disguised the new form as Louis XVI and Georgian pieces. The 1950s television boom finally made it essential, because only a low table could hold a plate without blocking the screen.

• Historians R.W. Symonds, B.B. Whineray, and Edward T. Joy classify the Godwin design as a coffee table.
• A modern dining table stands around 28 to 30 inches, barely taller than Godwin’s 27 inch table.
• Traditional Japanese interiors seat people on tatami mats, so tables are built with very short legs.
• Revival era coffee tables were styled after periods that never had coffee tables at all.
• Television pulled seating from circles around the fireplace into rows facing a single screen.