History of Design - FAN (Yashvi Bhatia 22BDC051)
Over a
thousand years have passed since the invention of fans. Fans have been utilised
and been around since a really long time and are best recognised as the
simple, practical machines used for cooling and dissipating heat. The Greeks,
Romans, and Etruscans employed fans as excellent ceremonial and cooling tools,
according to a few graphic documents and archaeological evidence from that era.
On the other hand, literary records from China reveal that the people there
once connected fans with legendary creatures and historical figures. But serving
its purpose, fans of different types made with different materials have been
made and used since forever. Fans differed
a lot from place to place. Around the same time in ancient history, different
empires and countries began using something to provide themselves with cooling
air which later was known as fans. The type of material and the structure of
fans too varied from one place to another.
Peacock
feathers were beloved by the Greeks and Romans. Around 500 BCE, the “punkah fan”
was in use in India. It was a small, hand-held fan that could
rotate or fan air. It was built from strips of bamboo or another plant fibre.
Anglo-Indians began to use the term during British rule to refer to a huge flat
fan that was mounted to the ceiling and was pulled by a domestic helper known
as the punkawallah.
Punkahs in the house of a British couple in India c. 1880
In Ancient
Egypt an especially well-preserved carving in the temple of Temple
of Ramesses III shows a figure commonly referred to as a ‘fan bearer’ carrying
aloft a long-handled processional fan trimmed with feathers used to cool
or shade court officials and dignitaries.
During
the dark ages, the screen fan, also known as “pien-mien” was the most
commonly used type of fan in China. The earliest pien-mien was a fan covered
with feathers or silk stretched over a frame and either painted or embroidered.
https://collections.mfa.org/internal/media/dispatcher/905752/preview;jsessionid=3E6143ACAFC8672DE77303EEB340451A
After the
ancient usage of fans with mostly being a blade like structure or more than one
of them, the basic mechanism of how air could be blown was introduced in the
minds of all including the engineers. The engineers now had the task to discover
how to rotate the wings or blades on its own. This is when technology came in
to role. In 1849, a steam-powered fan with a radius of 6 m designed by
William Brunton was operated at the Gerry Gale Colliery in South Wales. The
model was exhibited at the 1851 World's Fair. Later in 1851 David Boswell Reid, a Scottish doctor, installed four steam-powered fans in the
ceiling of St George's Hospital in Liverpool, so that the pressure produced by the fans would
force the incoming air upward and through vents in the ceiling.
https://cdn.britannica.com/70/24070-004-9518F67C/turbine-steam-De-Laval-nozzle-jet-wheel.jpg
The steam
engines being a wonderful help to the man force still felt inconvenient and had
many disadvantages. 1834, the historic time when the electric motor was
discovered. History was made when Thomas Davenport of Vermont invented the
first official battery-powered electric motor. This was the first electric
motor with enough power to do the job. This was the perfect opportunity for
people to put in their brains and create an electric motor operated fan. Between
1882 and 1886, Schuyler Wheeler invented a fan powered by electricity. He invented the desktop two-blade electric fan at the age of 22 and patented a type of electric battery which could
power it for a sustained period.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Crocker-Wheeler_electric_fan.jpg/220px-Crocker-Wheeler_electric_fan.jpg
In 1882, Philip H. Diehl succeeded in
developing the electric fan for the second time. Diehl took the sewing machine motor and attached the fan blades. He
attached it to the ceiling and the first ceiling fan was born. By the 1940s, Crompton
Greaves of India had become the world's largest manufacturer of electric
ceiling fans, sold primarily in India, Asia and the Middle East. In the 1950s,
tabletop fans and pedestal fans became eye-catching with bright colours.
https://exhalefans.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/DIEHL-CF-Ad-Circa-1900.jpg
After the invention
of ceiling fans, people started created decorative pieces out of it. In the
2000’s, fans were almost made out of every eye-catching colour and art pieces. Its
functionality remained the same but it now became a modern-day art piece coming
in various materials with lamps, funky designs and prints on it. People began
merging fans with latest design trends.
https://res.litfad.com/site/img/item/2020/03/25/467458/1200x1200.jpg
Dyson Air Multiplier fans introduced to the consumer market in
2009 have popularized a 1981 design by Toshiba that produces a fan that has no exposed fan blades or other
visibly moving parts (unless augmented by other features such as for
oscillation and directional adjustment).
If we look
at the latest development in recent times, we can see how immensely the
technology has affected our needs. We now have fans working with the help of
solar powers. The electric fans can be controlled using a remote or even from
our smart phones and gadgets nowadays.
REFERENCES
·
https://www.thefanmuseum.org.uk/fan-history
·
https://familytreemagazine.com/history/timelines/cooling-trends/
·
https://www.homestratosphere.com/types-of-fans/
·
https://antiquefanparts.com/circa-1936-emerson-silver-swan-12-oscillating-desk-fan/
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