Academic Posture

If I had to guess, I'd say most people who encounter Gokhale's method are out of college (or at least high school), and I'd guess they haven't had to sit through a lecture in years.  Luckily I haven't either, and luckily luckily my first job didn't require looking down at a pen and paper.  Given the back problems I developed working 8+ hours a day at a computer, I can't imagine the back problems I'd have developed sitting the same amount of time hunched over a book.

Sooner or later though, I do want to get back to traditional desk work.  If I were ever to go back to college or do any serious intellectual training, I would need to work with a pen-and-paper and pore over books like I used to.  Computers just don't cut it (and reading-in-bed certainly doesn't cut it).

So how did Shakespeare sit?  Frankly, how did anyone sit back in the day when work required bending over a pen and paper, presumably for long hours?  

Did they hip-hinge all the time?  This seems a little unrealistic.

Did they sit straight up while tipping their neck down?  I don't think Esther mentions this in her book explicitly, but I think it's implied by some of the pictures.

Anyways, here's a picture of Tesla with his head clearly tipped downwards:

https://www.allconnect.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/origin_Nikola-Tesla-cilveks-211.jpg 

Is Tesla sitting in a sustainable posture?  Here's another:

http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/nikola-tesla-naturalised-american-physicist-sitting-in-his-colorado-picture-id526606232

I'd love to purchase some kind of bookstand (like this http://www.bookandcopyholders.com), but some little voice me keeps asking "Well, did people in the PAST use stands when they had to write stuff?" It's actually kind of hard to find google images of 19th Century people doing deskwork (apparently photography was expensive and people didn't like candid photos :-P).

So, how did people do their deskwork back in the day?  How might I?  As always, thanks.