Marti Attoun
January 2001
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Vornado fans
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Michael Coup's collection always causes a stir. The Wichita, Kan., man has piled up one of the largest collections of antique fans in the country. He's such a fanatic that he even bought the rights to a defunct fan, the Vornado, and put it back into production.
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At his fan factory in Andover, near Wichita, Michael converted the large lobby into the American Fan Collectors Museum so other fan collectors could showcase their 'finds.'
'This is the world's most complete collection of mechanical fans,' Michael says. The fans are arranged in a timeline to represent all major fan designs, beginning with the first modern electric fan built by Dr. S.S. Wheeler in 1882.
'The invention of the fan is a major factor in world history,' Michael says. 'It may sound like an exaggeration, but without fans, we would have no air conditioning, forced air heat, cars, trucks, planes and refrigerators.' To make his point, he indicates three 1890s fans sporting familiar company names: Emerson, Westinghouse and General Electric.
'Out of something as mundane as the fan, these companies took off,' he says.
The first motors were practically handmade. 'They weren't big enough to grind grain or do anything industrial, except maybe work a sewing machine,' Michael says. 'The fan was the most obvious application; just stick a blade on it.'
Some of the earliest fans are quite crude, such as the bipolar fan with two exposed wrapped coils. Early fans didn't have cages or guards, and tales abound of abbreviated cat tails and snarled hair.
Included in the museum are several rare fans, including some early 1900s models powered by alcohol and water. Heat from a kerosene or alcohol lamp heated air in a piston, which turned a crankshaft with a fan blade attached.
The ceiling gyrofans of the 1890s used a combination of table fan motors mounted on a ceiling fan pipe. When switched on, both fan motors ran, as well as rotated 360 degrees.
'Those really moved some air,' Michael notes. These fans were made by companies such as Diehl, Jandus, General Electric and Emerson.
From about 1903 to 1910, companies mainly experimented with different oscillating mechanisms, which allowed the fan to move in different directions and blow air around the room, instead of being stationary. Most fans moved side to side, but some moved in circles or rotated 360 degrees.