Every year from July third until right around the middle of August, we hit the ‘Dog Days of Summer’ which comes with the rising of the star Sirius in the night skies. Although the Greek and Roman astrologists at the time would equate this time period with disasters such as drought, severe storms, and even mad dogs, the reality is that this time of year brings one thing for certain and that is a massive rise in temperature.
However, like almost any problem faced by Humanity, over the centuries we have come up with many ways to beat the heat, from swimming holes to modern air conditioning units that can make it feel like you are spending your Summer in the arctic rather than Texas if you set it to the correct desired temperature.
Air conditioning did not exist until Willis Carrier perfected his ‘cooling machine’ until 1902 however, so how did people give them selves relief from the hottest days in the Northern hemisphere? Fans.
The first fans, which were not fold-able and powered by Human muscle rather than electricity existed over three thousand years ago, where they can be spotted in Egyptian, Roman, Etruscan, and Greek records and artwork.
Later the Chinese and Japanese would be the popularly ascribed source for the first ‘folding’ fans as well as the explosion in popularity in use in the Western world as traders brought them back to various home ports in Europe, mostly for use as status symbols by the royalty of Europe who had connections to the settlements on the coasts of both China and Japan to get their hands on the imported items.
This would lead to an explosion of hand fan usage from the seventeenth century through to the nineteenth, right before the growth of electric power would change the world forever, although to this day hand fans are still manufactured and sold, some for curio items or souvenirs, others to mark special events such as the weddings of member of the British Royal family.
Electricity would of course come synonymous with what our modern brain thinks of when we hear the word fan, and for good reason as they have now been in existence for one-hundred-thirty-seven years and running, with the first steps being taken with Chinese inventor Ting Huan around 180 A.D.
It was not until the nineteenth century however that electricity would become involved and really got things in motion with an electric model of the fan when Schuyler Wheeler would take the work of Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison and invented the first electrical desk top fan, which had no protective cages and only two blades. Later a victim of the infamous Chicago fire of 1871, went to work for the Singer Sewing Machine company in New York and after attaching a sewing machine motor to a fan blade and mounted it on the factory ceiling, inventing the ceiling fan, which he later patented.
Of course, as mentioned above soon Carrier would come along and be inspired to create the air conditioning units used across the world today, but as I sit here during these ‘Dog Days,’ nothing but a fan to keep me cool, I cannot help but be a fan of the fan, and thankful of all the hard work throughout history that went into making them.
