Periodic table
Russian chemistry professor Dmitri Mendeleev and German chemist Julius Lothar Meyer independently published their periodic tables in 1869 and 1870, respectively. Mendeleev's table was his first published version; that of Meyer was an expanded version of his (Meyer's) table of 1864. They both constructed their tables by listing the elements in rows or columns in order of atomic weight and starting a new row or column when the characteristics of the elements began to repeat.
Pier table
The pier table takes its English name from the "pier wall", the space between windows. The table was developed in continental Europe in the 1500s and 1600s, and became popular in England in the last quarter of the 1600s. The pier table became known in North America in the mid-1700s, and was a popular item into the mid to late 1800s. It was common for the space between the rear legs of the pier table to contain a mirror, or "pier glass", to help hide the wall. Later pier tables were designed to stand in any niche in a room, and the pier glass moved above the table.