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| Credit: Wikimedia Invention of an Electric Fan |
Introduction
An electric fan is a device that has radial blades
connected to the central rotating hub and works on the principle of conversion
of electric energy into mechanical energy with the help of an electric motor.
Invention of an Electric Fan
Being too
hot must have been a major problem for people before the late 1800s. As soon as
electric power was introduced, investors started to work on ideas for the
electric fan.
Dr. Schuyler
Skaats Wheeler (1860-1923) was the American engineer responsible for creating
the personal two-blade desk fan, an invention beloved of anyone who has ever held
an indoor job in the summer months. Invented by Wheeler at the tender age of
twenty-two, the fan was made of brass, with no protective caging surrounding
the rotating blades, resulting in a product that was both stylish and dangerous
in equal measure.
However,
like most inventions of that time that used electricity, when they were first
introduced these fans were the reserve of the rich and the powerful. It was not
until the 1920s, when industrial advances meant that fan blades could be mass-produced
from steel, that prices started to drop and the ordinary homeowner could afford
one.
Aside from his fan, Wheeler also became known for employing a large workforce of sightless people. He noticed that his sighted employees who were skilled at winding coil did so without ever looking at their hands. He blindfolded himself to see if he could wind a coil without looking and found that, with a little practice, he could. The number of blind individuals in the population has increased as result of World War I. Wheeler set up a department at his factory that employed only sightless men and women, putting them on a par with their sighted contemporaries.
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