Although today I am spoiled and won’t settle for less than AC, these must’ve been a godsend in the summer time for people that never had any recourse before, and worked in hot kitchens and factories. Or to help you sleep at night for that matter.
It would be hard to believe that they weren’t. We usually don’t use our air conditioning*, and I find that the fan makes working at my computer bearable. Considering that before they existed people used human-powered substitutes (hand-held fans, or large swinging carpet-like air movers), there was definitely a market for such devices that didn’t require human effort.
But I haven’t researched it. The beginning of electric fans would be an interesting topic.
*My wife, Pepper Mill, doesn’t like the noise of our window air conditioners, nor the way they block the light. On the upside, our home energy efficiency is high, and our electric bills low.
Fans existed long before electricity. You had water wheels and steam engines powering large fans for things like mine ventilation and large buildings.
The electric fan was invented in the late 1800s, which was long before most people had electricity in their homes. So initially, electric fans replaced earlier technologies, being used in buildings and mines and such. Smaller fans began to be used by businesses that had electricity. By the 1920s or so, factories could stamp out metal parts to make fans cheaply, so they started to become a lot more common in homes. You have to keep in mind though that by the mid 1920s, only about half of American homes had electricity, and an electric fan doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have electricity. Dense population areas got electricity first, so electricity and electrical devices like fans would have been rare in rural areas.
As more and more people started to get electricity in their homes, electric fans for home use also became more common. So overall, it was more of a slow roll-out due to the lack of electricity in homes instead of fans being popular right from the get-go.
But was it one of the first things people bought when they got electricity? I’m thinking especially of the rural electrification programs of the New Deal across the South. It’s often thought of as having initially been primarily a way to give people light at night, but they already had candles and lanterns and things for that. Personally I would have been much more excited about getting a fan.
They were excited about labor saving devices as well, like clothes irons, washing machines, sewing machines, blenders/mixers, toasters, and vacuum cleaners. Refrigerators were also high on everyone’s list, for obvious reasons. It wasn’t just lights. Fans were a nice thing to have, and they did buy them, but fans weren’t necessarily at the top of everyone’s list.
Yeah, fridges would be big, although people had iceboxes.
In the South, in the summer, I personally would trade away all the labor saving devices for a fan.
Punkah fans, pulled by a ‘punkah wallah’ were ubiquitous in India and the Middle East for centuries.
In fact, punkah fans were also common in the antebellum American South, where there were slaves to pull the fans.
How Ceiling Fans Allowed Slaves to Eavesdrop on Plantation Owners
But only a small percentage of the population could afford those, presumably. Kind of like how at one time many rich people had summer homes in the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior where I came of age. Near the lake, it rarely rises much above 70° even in July and August. But then when air conditioners (or maybe before that, electric fans) were popularized, those homes dropped in value. One of my friends lived in one said to once have been owned by Teddy Roosevelt. It had seen better days, but it was still an impressive piece of architecture, with a skylight shining down onto several stories of a winding central staircase.
My mother grew up on a farm washing clothes by hand. It was backbreaking work from what she says. Even getting a hand wringer was an improvement.
I think it’s easy to forget how hard life was most people.
I find it hard to imagine how people survived much of the year in the Houston area (and virtually all of Texas during the summer) in the days before A/C, even with electric fans.
One evocative scene in the movie “Rear Window” shows a Manhattan couple living in an un-air conditioned apartment spreading out a mattress on their balcony to sleep so they could get some relief on a hot summer night. Imagine trying to sleep indoors somewhere when there was no air movement, humidity was extremely high and nighttime temps never got below 80F (and the house was even warmer). Move outdoors and the bugs would eat you alive. Yecchh.
That’s right, good scene. I’m sure that’s why screened in porches were such common features a century ago.
They were even called sleeping porches.
Ahh, I did not know that! Makes sense. Better yet if they are wraparound porches so you can get a crossbreeze.
Also old homes in hot parts of the country were designed with high ceilings so that the hot air would be kept away from the people. Home design assuming air conditioning is very different from design assuming no ac.
When I was a kid there were still some hand fans around. I believe they were given away with advertising - I think they appear in the “Inherit the Wind” movie. So it was do it yourself punkah fans.
Very appropriate thread for me, since we got air conditioning yesterday after 23 years here. There are more and more high heat days compared to when we moved here. Before we mostly used a large set of fans from thrift stores distributed around the house, cooling the house in the night and early morning. Climate in the Bay Area lets you do that. And good insulation. So I’m an expert on using fans for cooling.
My mom lives in northern Ontario and does that in the summer. Uses fans to pull in cool air at night and then closes the windows and draws all the heavy shades in the daytime. (And of course she has good insulation, living where it gets so cold in the winter.) It’s clever and “green”, but too much of a hassle for me. I just crank the AC.
Even early electric lights were brighter than candles and most lanterns. It was quite a dramatic difference. Also, electric lights, even with the issues around early wiring systems, were safer than open flame types of lighting, which meant fewer house fires.
Electric lights were especially welcome during long, dark, winter nights, and certainly were useful year round whereas electric fans were only used a few months out of the year in most places.
I guess MMV on how well people tolerate heat and humidity. I would rather sit in the dark if that’s what I somehow needed to do to get a low temperature and dew point. If electricity and air conditioners were 10 times as expensive, I would still sink every penny I’ve got into buying one and then use plastic sheeting to make a little cocoon where I could be cool. I envy rich people who keep their cars in air-conditioned garages so they don’t have to sit in the heat for even a few seconds before the AC begins to make it comfortable.
As said above, homes were designed differently, and located differently before the a/c and presumably before the fan. People were likewise living differently and use to that (sleeping on the porch, or using shutters/curtains to keep out the heat of the day).
In much of europe a/c’s are still uncommon, but the construction of their homes allows one to really keep the cool of the night inside all day. Not only are they well insulated but also have a much greater thermal capacity to hold temperature in their building material. Now on the downside it is needed to block sunlight by shutters from entering and using now mostly LED lighting during the day.
Does anyone remember the book The Fan Man, by William Kotzwinkle? Must have been 30 or more years ago, but that was a funny one. Nice memories brought back 
Shutters aren’t the best option in Southern Europe: roll-up blinds (either added on or built-in) are much more common and can be graduated so you get natural light without having the sun invade the house. After many years of us being confused about why didn’t other people use such a wonderful invention, now they’re finally a big export item. The add-ons have the advantage of easier installation, the built-in ones provide additional insulation when lowered fully.