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The first ever fan was the hand held fan and it was said to be created by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. -
The Japanese invented folding fans in the eighth century, possibly inspired by the way bats fold their wings. -
Roman emperors added the cooling power of snow hauled down from the Alps -
The Chinese were also pioneers in mechanizing the fan. About 180 AD, the famed Han dynasty inventor Ting Huan created a rotary fan employing seven wheels, each 10 feet in diameter, by which a single man could cool an entire hall. -
Handheld fans started to become more popular and painted fans were in high demand. -
Portuguese traders brought Asian fans to Europe in the 1400s. -
In 1830 John Gorrie brought back the idea of blowing air over ice in order to cool a room. This was the start of the AC. He made a machine that blew air over a bucket of ice to cool hospital rooms for malaria and yellow-fever patients. -
Schuyler Skaats Wheeler created the first electric desk fan with two blades and a motor. there was no cage around the fan blades. -
Philip Diehl took a sewing machine motor, mounted a fan blade, and attached the whole thing to the ceiling -
A few years after patenting the ceiling fan, Diehl added a light fixture fan. -
Carrier built his first air conditioner in July 1902. Soon Carrier’s invention was cooling movie theaters and department stores. -
In 1904, Diehl and Co. put a split-ball joint on an electric fan, allowing it to be redirected; three years later, this idea developed into the first oscillating fan. This made fans catch on fast. By 1910, Westinghouse was marketing an electric fan for household use with the claim that the electricity to operate it would cost only one-fourth of a penny per hour. -
Frigidaire introduced a new split-system room cooler to the marketplace in 1929 that was small enough for home use and shaped like a radio cabinet. However, the system was heavy, expensive and required a separate, remotely controlled condensing unit. General Electric's Frank Faust improved on this design, developing a self-contained room cooler, and General Electric ended up producing 32 similar prototypes from 1930 to 1931. -
Cars started getting fans, specifically air conditioning, as an option in 1939 when Packard became the first car manufacturer to offer it. -
Self-contained window fans, made of plastic instead of metal, were introduced in 1934 by Vent-Axia, a British company. -
Fans started having a heating function with the introduction of the first forced air furnace using coal as a heat source in 1935, which used an electric fan to distribute heated air through ductwork -
In 1937, the development of a new plastic laminate for coating fan blades, Micarta, made fans quieter and less likely to warp or corrode.