Some rocking chair trivia: "It is no longer possible to ascertain who actually created the first rocking chair but the story that Benjamin Franklin was the first in 1787 to have had curved rails set under a chair is not true. An earlier bill from the furniture maker William Savery of 1774 bears the inscription: 'to putting rockers on a chair' for which the charge was one shilling and sixpence." (found on the site http://www.antique-antiques.com/antique-rocking-chairs.shtml)