Ceiling Fans

Ceiling Fans

Schulyer Wheeler was an American engineer who invented the two bladed electric fan in 1886. It was the principal method of home cooling until Willis Haviland Carrier invented the first air-conditioner system.

Wheeler (1860-1923) figured out how to apply the fledgling science of electricity to make a fan turn. Drawing on the work of Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla, Wheeler invented a desktop fan consisting of two blades unshielded by any sort of protective cage and powered by an electric motor. The fan was marketed by Crocker & Curtis Electric Motor Co.

Further development of the electric fan fell to Philip H Diehl, a German immigrant who had lost everything in the 1871 Chicago fire. Diehl pulled up stakes for the East Coast, where he went to work for the Singer Sewing Machine company. He took a sewing-machine motor, mounted a fan blade and attached the whole thing to the ceiling, thereby inventing the ceiling fan, which he patented in 1887. Later, as head of his own company, Diehl added a light fixture to the ceiling fan. 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.