History Of Ceiling Fans

Ceiling fans serve a great purpose in our homes and have been around in some fashion since at least the 1600 s.

History of ceiling fans. It was not until 1882 that an electrically powered ceiling fan was built a german american man named philip diehl being its inventor. Such was the punkah that originated in the early 17th century. The earliest electric fans appeared in the the fan was basically a blade attached to an electric motor.

Some versions were even noted as being around during the roman empire. In 1983 casablanca introduced the world s first computerized ceiling fan control called inteli touch. Philip diehl s ceiling fan was the combination of wheeler s first electric fan and diehl s electric motor.

The inteli touch control included a three button changed later to four buttons wall controller a pc board inside the fan s housing and a small piezo buzzer to emit electronic beeps to verify fan functions. The concept of ceiling fan dates back to as early as the time of the roman empire where human powered palm frond ceiling fans were present. The first electric fan was invented in 1882 before diehl s ceiling fan by a man by the name of schuyler skaats wheeler.

The first ceiling fans were hand operated usually by servants and were conspicuous for their somewhat erratic low speed operation. Pictorial records showing some of the earliest fans date from around 3000 bc and there is evidence that the greeks etruscans and romans all used fans as cooling and ceremonial devices while chinese literary sources associate the fan with ancient mythical and historical characters. Originally operated manually by a cord and nowadays powered electrically using a belt driven system these punkahs move air by going to and fro.

He adapted an electric motor that he had designed for use in the singer sowing machines and decided to install it into what would be the world s first ceiling fan. Development of the fields of electrical engineering and aeronautical engineering paralleled each other in the industry of electric fans. Large turbines were used to drove a vast system of belts to turn the ceiling fans blades.

Punkah style ceiling fans are based on the earliest form of a fan which was first invented in india around 500 bc. These were cut from an indian palmyra leaf which forms its rather large blade moving slowly in a pendular manner. The first ceiling fans were created in the late 1800 s and actually did not use any electricity at all.