Murphy Bed Plans
Murphy bed plans and kits are available here in this store. Murphy bed plans can be used with great ingenuity to achieve abundance of space in a room. Murphy bed plans not only meets such purpose, but can enhance the beauty of any room.
History Of The Murphy Bed
Instructions for operating a Murphy bed. William L. Murphy applied for a patent for the Murphy bed on April 1, 1916 and was granted Design Patent D49,273 on June 27, 1916. Murphy started the Murphy Wall Bed Company and began production in San Francisco. In January 1990 the company changed its name to the "Murphy Bed Co. Inc."
These beds make appearances in movies, as they lend themselves to slapstick humor in which people are trapped when the bed folds into the upright position, carrying the person on the bed inside. For example, in Stanley Kramer's comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the smarmy Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers) gets thrown from the fire truck ladder, through a window and onto a Murphy bed, which promptly retracts into the wall.
In Mel Brooks' Silent Movie, a hotel's neon sign advertises "Murphy Beds - Charming to the Unsophisticated". Modern Murphy beds utilize a counterbalance system making it near impossible to get trapped (see the picture here on slide 5).
In 1989 an appellate court held that the term "Murphy bed" is no longer entitled to trademark cover because a substantial majority of the public perceive the term as a generic term for a bed that folds into a wall, rather than the specific model made by the Murphy Bed Co.