Early electric fans

Re:Early electric fans by scottlocklin on Thursday June 11, 2020 @10:26AM (#23489230)

It's a fairly common interest believe it or not; I was very interested in this era of fans while I was in grad school. In fact I was interested in an even more specific variety of pancake motor 6 bladed fan that pretty much every other fan-fan also wants. Since they're so bloody expensive I ended up collecting radios from the 1920s instead, which kind of scratches the same itch.

https://antiquefanparts.com/1893-meston-series-aa-12-desk-fa...

https://antiquefanparts.com/circa-1888-edison-x-motor-fan/

https://antiquefanparts.com/1890-riker-electric-motor-compan...

https://antiquefanparts.com/circa-1894-edison-sixth-hp-slow-...

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/antique-1901-general-...

My grail fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZzkUC0TAhg http://www.hudsonscustommachining.com/images/1904emerson/lar...

They cost so bloody much, it's probably easier to just build a reproduction.

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Re:Early electric fans by mattkrause on Thursday June 11, 2020 @11:13AM (#23489721)

The cheapest one is $20,000!

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Re:Early electric fans by scottlocklin on Thursday June 11, 2020 @11:29AM (#23489886)

I thought they were too much when I was in grad school in the 90s and you could find them on ebay for $500.... $500 for a goddamned fan! Well, it's not like they made more of them since then, and many have been parted out or thrown away.

Those pancake fans are really cool!

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Re:Early electric fans by mattkrause on Thursday June 11, 2020 @12:48PM (#23490725)

Oh, no argument that they look cool. I was just expecting the price to be a lot lower!

Does anyone make good-looking modern reproductions?

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Re:Early electric fans by scottlocklin on Thursday June 11, 2020 @03:09PM (#23492295)

Nope. But for $20k you could probably pay a skilled machinist to make you a couple of them.

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