Historical Background Of Fan

Old Westinghouse table fan, example of axial fan.
The oldest fans, which are referred to, were manual, in principle with a fixed handle, such as the flabellum, which appears in Egyptian culture, at least since the nineteenth dynasty, to later pass in the fifth century BC. from C. to Ancient Greece, in which it was shaped like a palmette, as it appears in paintings of ceramic vessels. Also from Ancient Rome there are paintings depicting slaves handling the flabellum.

Also handled by slaves, but with a certain mechanism, is the abano, which was a frame with thick cloth that was hung from the ceiling and moved by a system of ropes and pulleys, which the Arabs already used at the beginning of the 7th century. It is also found in India and the Middle East with the name of punkah. In China, the origin of the rigid fan is around 2697 BC. of C., with Emperor Hsiem Yuan, and the oldest written reference (1825 BC) mentions two feathered fans offered to Emperor Tchao Wong of the Chou dynasty.

But the similar fan or precursor of which we know today as such, appears in 1886 and is an invention of the American Schuyler Skaats Wheeler, which was marketed by his company Crocker & Wheeler, installed in New York. It was small in size and designed to be placed on a table. Almost simultaneously appears in Germany a roof version created by the engineer Philip Diehl.