AMANA KITCHEN APPLIANCE

Fan we have in our living room.

The first recorded mechanical fan was the punkah fan used in the Middle East in the early 19th century. It had a canvas covered frame that was suspended from the ceiling. Servants, known as punkah wallahs, pulled a rope connected to the frame to move the fan back and forth.

The Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century introduced belt-driven fans powered by factory waterwheels. Attaching wooden or metal blades to shafts overhead that were used to drive the machinery, the first industrial fans were developed. One of the first workable mechanical fans was built by Alexander Sablukov in 1832. He called his invention, a kind of a centrifugal fan, an Air Pump. Centrifugal fans were successfully tested inside coal mines and factories in 1832-1834. When Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla introduced electrical power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the public, the personal electrical fan was introduced. Between 1882 and 1886, Dr. Schuyler Skaats Wheeler developed the two-bladed desk fan, a type of personal electric fan. It was commercially marketed by the American firm Crocker & Curtis electric motor company. In 1882, Philip Diehl introduced the electric ceiling fan. Diehl is considered the father of the modern electric fan. In the late 19th century, electric fans were used only in commercial establishments or in well-to-do households. Heat-convection fans fueled by alcohol, oil, or kerosene were common around the turn of the 20th century.

The first American fans were made from around the late 1890s to the early 1920s. They had brass blades, a lot of them also had brass cages, and though they were built very well internally, they were far from finger safe, as a lot of them had cage openings so big that one could put an entire hand or arm right through it. Many children had hands and fingers severely injured by those fans.

In the 1920s, industrial advances allowed steel to be mass-produced in different shapes, bringing fan prices down and allowing more homeowners to afford them. In the 1930s, the first art deco fan (the "Swan Fan") was designed. In the 1950s, fans were manufactured in colors that were bright and eye catching. Central air conditioning in the 1960s brought an end to the golden age of the electric fan. In the 1970s, Victorian-style ceiling fans became popular.

In the 20th century, fans have become utilitarian. During the 2000s, fan aesthetics have become a concern to fan buyers. The fan is part of everyday life in the Far East, Japan, and Spain (among other places). Electric fans have been largely replaced by air conditioners in offices, but they are still a common household appliance.

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
EF50mm f/1.8 II
50 mm, ISO 400, 1/80 sec at f/1.8

These Dyson fans seemed to work through aerodynamic magic without visible fan blades. I could hardly see the slit through which air was being blown.

I love that Dyson can make radically improved household appliances through the use of SCIENCE. In other words, I'm a Dyson fan.