The interesting story of the hand fan

The fan is the most important invention of the last two hundred years, and of the last thousand. It was invented in the 15th century by a Frenchman named Rene Descartes, who wrote about it in his Discours de la merveille (1637), one of the great treatises on philosophy. Descartes was trying to explain how we can discern between a moving object and a stationary one.

The fan sits at the center of his argument: if you put a body of water in front of you and move it around with your hands you can see that it always remains stationary (because any movement will cause friction against its surface). But if you move your hands slightly to the side, you can feel that there is some force pushing on your fingers; thus, when you push harder on your hand there is more force applied than when you push less hard.

If you put both hands over your head and pull with them simultaneously then they will move as a whole unit toward either side (along with your body) — but only if there is no friction against their surface — because each finger exerts more force than each hand exerts.

However, if you let go so that one hand remains stationary but the other moves back and forth then that motion will be apparent only when both hands are moving together; thus, Descartes concluded that one must also have some form of “rest” or “support” to which everything else could be linked.

Nowhere in this discussion did he mention a fan. His argument was developed out of work he had done on optics many years earlier, where he had tried to explain how people could identify objects by their refraction properties. He had noticed that people who could see bright objects through dark ones were more likely to look at them from above (and thus were able to infer their shape from their light reflection pattern).

He also realized that it was possible for someone sitting next to him who could not see very well (i.e., did not have much light reaching him) to infer what an object looked like by observing how it moved through air molecules as he breathed in through his nose; this caused him to conclude that air molecules absorbed energy when they moved past an object, which explained why objects appeared brighter in daylight than at night and why something moving past me would appear brighter or darker depending on whether I was concentrating or not while looking at it (the idea is similar to our understanding of thermodynamics).

The first fans: who invented the fan and when?

The fan has been around for more than 2,000 years and was invented as early as 1000 B.C. by a Chinese king whose name we can’t remember.

Our position is different than the one many new companies find themselves in: we are not battling it out in a large, well-defined market with clear incumbents (which is why we can’t get away with “Geeks are poisonous to society. Linux is the black sheep of a declining flock). We are setting out to define a new market; and that means we can’t limit ourselves to tweaking the product (we need to tweak the market too).

We have three main properties of our fans:

• They have been around for more than 2,000 years
• They have been around since 1000 B.C., which coincides with the time of King Zhou, who invented the first fans in China
• They love us enough that they own us (their caps & T-shirts)

Our position is different than the one many new companies find themselves in: we are not battling it out in a large, well-defined market with clear incumbents. We are setting out to define a new market; and while this is less comfortable territory (it’s still “big business” but isn’t quite as much fun or glamorous), our position isn’t so far from where big business traditionally has been — our goal here is fundamentally about defining new markets and markets for products that haven't yet existed because nobody has tried to create them before. 

There will be considerable competition (and it will be exciting) but we believe that there are opportunities here that couldn't exist without us being present on the scene. The key difference between us and traditional consumer-facing businesses is that these markets have never existed before — so they provide an opportunity for innovation at scale by companies like ourselves who already exist or who may soon exist — which only makes sense since those markets could provide an opportunity for high margin growth if done well.

How the fan became a fashionable accessory in the Middle Ages.

The fan is one of the fundamental accessories for a schoolroom. It is beautiful, it is portable, it can be used as a prop, and it can be used to circulate air in the classroom. But how did the fan become so valuable? And why were we so quick to appreciate its benefits?

The story involves two things: firstly, it is about how the fan was invented, and secondly how its benefits were used to transform society. The first point will be easy to understand; however, understanding the second point requires a little bit of historical background. As with many things in life, the earliest version of an idea belongs with its greatest innovators. In this case, it belongs with Thomas Aquinas (he was credited with inventing the fan while he was still a student at Oxford University).

Aquinas was born in Italy in 1225 (for those who are interested his birthday falls on March 12), and he spent most of his life there. He studied theology at Bologna and Padua before returning to Oxford where he received his Doctorate in Arts in 1250 (eventually taking up Canon Law as well). His first major work was On Divine Names which dealt with biblical names of God. Next came On Justification which dealt with God’s goodness towards people when they sinned. He then wrote Summa Contra Gentiles which dealt with man’s fall from grace through sin – and what that meant for individuals personally (hence his famous phrase “I am not ashamed of being human”).

His greatest work, however, was On Free Will which discussed whether humans have free will (or freedom) and thus deserve punishment for their sins if they persist in them after repeated attempts to avoid them. Aquinas made two key points about free will:

First, humans react very strongly against any suggestions that they do not have free will – even if those suggestions originate from other people First Conditio: We mustn’t give up our freedom First Negation: We mustn’t give up our freedom Nowadays this maxim is known as “Divine Providence” or some other variant thereof; but back then it was known by another name: “modus operandi” or “method of operation” – something like the modern term “decision-making process” or “executive action” (which should come as no surprise considering that Aqu

Fans in art and literature: how the fan has been depicted throughout history.

Anyone who has read the history of art knows that the fan concept, once invented in the Middle Ages, was later manipulated by the church to conform to its own design more closely. However, it is only in recent years that a fair amount of scholarship has been devoted to this subject and we now have several excellent treatments of the matter. For example:

Sutton, Anne. "Fans and Fictions." In The Fan and Fan Culture: An Encyclopedia. Eds. Ann Carlson and Craig Conner. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999. 205-214.

Sutton, Anne. "The Contribution of the Medieval Fan," Early Medieval Studies 29 (1999): 207-248.

Terenziani, Louis S.; David Riesman; and Mary E. Fisher (eds.). The Oxford Companion to Popular Culture. Oxford University Press; New York: Oxford University Press; New York: Oxford University Press., 2004.

Terenziani, Louis S.; David Riesman; and Mary E. Fisher (eds.). The Oxford Companion to Popular Culture. 2nd ed., Oxford University Press; New York: Oxford University Press; New York: Oxford University Press., 2009

Owen Gettis Jensen, Patricia M., "The Fan," In the Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, eds Patricia M Owen Gettis Jensen and Richard Dyer (New York: Macmillan Reference), 2001, 1665–1666

Famous fans: some of the most iconic fans through the ages.

The fan is an amazingly simple device: a stick with a blade attached to it. It was invented in China about 10,000 years ago and spread to the Middle East around 8000year later. Yet its use has been around for much longer than that, spread as far as India and Greece. We’re going to look at some of the most iconic fans through the ages.

The earliest known Chinese fans were made from bamboo or reeds, but they were unwieldy, hard to make and tended not to last long. They were used primarily by those who lived in homes rather than travelers. Later, the Chinese version became known as “obscure fans” (you may have seen them before on television). The word “obscure” here is used in a sense akin to saying “faint;” fans were considered reserved for people who didn’t want to attract attention or might lose their way in the crowd.

Later, they also came into use among Buddhist monks – perhaps because they could be used without attracting attention (although there is no evidence that this made them any more popular). The Hindu fan was first seen during Indus Valley civilization about seven thousand years ago and it spread through Asia and into China. The legendary Buddha himself is thought to have started using them during his travels – which makes sense since he was walking across a desert!

It wasn’t until the 18th Century when Western Europeans started using them as fans (or pinafores) that they became widely popular with Westerners – although they were still considered something of an exotic object only reserved for royalty and nobility. By then, other societies had developed their own fan designs: Assyrians seem to have invented one called the pantheon fan that was used by priests for ceremonies; Greek rulers often wore one at important events like weddings; Germanic rulers like Charlemagne are believed to have worn these as well; and some early modern monarchs like Charles II of France may have worn one during special occasions such as state visits abroad. In fact, royal families all over Europe are said to have been wearing these types of fans throughout several centuries from the 16th through 19th centuries (the so-called Victorian era) – including Queen Victoria herself!

The Egyptian Pharaohs also had elaborated Egyptian themed fan designs which are thought to date back even farther than Roman times: they donned them during ceremonies at temples before

The enduring popularity of the fan through the ages.

The ultimate status quo is, at least for now, the fan. It may have gone through some unique periods of popularity between the Middle Ages and the current day: whether or not it has always been a standard for fans and whether or not it is currently used by millions of people, but I think we can all agree that the fan is pretty much where we are going to end up and that it will be with us for a long time to come.

The most important thing to note here is that while there are many other ways in which fans have changed throughout history — whether they were first invented as an extension of hand-holding fans made by Medieval knights (see below), early fans were purely ornamental (in medieval Europe) or were created as a form of windlass (in medieval China) — they will always be recognizable as fans. Simply put, they will always be different from one another and there isn’t much that can be done to make them resemble any other device except in their look.

It’s also worth noting that while there are many ways in which fans have changed over time, when I say “fan” I don’t mean “fans” in any sense. There are many kinds of fans: stick fans, windlasses, hand-pulled fans, hand-pushed fans…the list goes on and on; but let me try to narrow it down a bit.

For starters, let me say that I believe the fan has been around since ancient times (though often with faulty attribution). A common description given for its origins is that coins were standard currency during ancient Greece; and an even more common one says this about Rome: coins were used as currency everywhere after Roman times…with exception to Italy and Spain where they remained until modern times (which means they were invented by the locals instead). Either way you look at it though, no one seems to know where it came from — though some claim early cultures discovered its uses around 4000 BC.

I am not sure if this claim can be substantiated because no one really knows when it was invented — nor if there was one single inventor who saw its potential: I would say multiple inventors contributed over time rather than all together on one day so everything we know about this fan comes from historians looking at extremely limited evidence.

The first use attributed to something specific was in China around AD 300 BC when emperors began using standards. Nowadays, we use electric fans, The story of the electric fans is also interesting and deserves to be read.