Ceiling fans → During the summer months, you can make a room feel up to seven degrees cooler by creating a "wind chill" effect just by using decorative ceiling fans. In the winter, you are able to reverse your fan to bring down the hot air that tends to rise towards your ceiling. Savings for these methods could run as high as 40% in energy bills.
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A ceiling fan is a mechanical fan, usually electrically powered, suspended from the ceiling of a room, that uses hub-mounted rotating paddles to circulate air.
A ceiling fan rotates much more slowly than an electric desk fan; it cools people effectively by introducing slow movement into the otherwise still, hot air of a room, inducing evaporative cooling. Fans never actually cool air, unlike air-conditioning equipment, but use significantly less power (cooling air is thermodynamically expensive).
History
The first ceiling fans appeared in the early 1860s and 1870s, in the United States. At that time, they were not powered by any form of electric motor. Instead, a stream of running water was used, in conjunction with a turbine, to drive a system of belts which would turn the blades of two-blade fan units. These systems could accommodate several fan units, and so became popular in stores, restaurants, and offices. Some of these systems still survive today, and can be seen in parts of the southern United States where they originally proved useful.
The electrically powered ceiling fan was invented in 1882 by Philip Diehl; he had engineered the electric motor used in the first Singer sewing machines, and in 1882 adapted that motor for use in a ceiling-mounted fan. Each "Diehl Electric Fan" had its own self-contained motor unit, with no need for belt drive.
Diehl was almost immediately up against fierce competition due to the commerci ... Read the rest of this article