Fan

a light, swinging contrivance designed to give motion to the air. The Scriptures speak of using a fan for driving the chaff from a threshing floor. This, of course, would be necessary only in a country where a breeze was infrequent during the threshing season. The modern fanning mill, and the fan in a threshing machine, are improvements on this ancient method of winnowing grain.

A very different use of the fan is that of moving air for the sake of coolness. In India apartments are cooled by a long, swinging fan called a punka. It is suspended in a bamboo frame and is swung to and fro by a servant. Those who can afford the expense keep the punka going day and night. A somewhat similar contrivance is in use in the Southern United States, especially at meal time. It serves a double purpose of cooling the diningroom and of driving flies from the table. The punka has been replaced largely by the electric fan, now widely used.

In hot countries fans for cooling the face have been in use from remote ages. Sennacherib, the Assyrian, is represented in sculpture as attended by female servants who cooled his face with feather fans. The sculptures of ancient Thebes in Egypt show that the fan was in use for thousands of years before Christ. When the Prince of Wales, afterward Edward VII, visited India, he was presented with a heart-shaped fan having an ivory handle. It was of unknown age. It had been preserved in a temple by the Hindus and had been held in great veneration for generations. The ancient fans appear to have been made chiefly of feathers, fastened in wood or ivory handles.

Ladies' fans, carried partly for use and partly for ornament, are of ancient date. In Rome a handsome fan was a regular part of a bridal outfit. The invention of the folding lady's fan is credited to the Japanese. The Chinese are noted for the manufacture of this sort of fan. The ribs are made of ivory or bamboo, the web of rice paper. In the Middle Ages a Chinese fan of the more expensive sort was regarded as a fitting present from an ambassador to his queen. The Japanese are noted for the manufacture of light, durable fans, gayly decorated with colored flowers, butterflies, and human figures. Immense numbers are imported by the western nations.

Society fans came into general use, probably, about the time of Queen Elizabeth. Steele and Addison in the Tatler and the Spectator have several articles on the use of the fan by the London coquette. They are merciless in their criticisms of fan flirtation as then carried on. The poets of the day make frequent allusions to the fan. In speaking of the prevailing immodesty of conversation, Pope says:

During the seventeenth century Paris was the great European center of fan making. The ribs were made of ivory, and were ornamented with jewels. The web was made not infrequently of thin, transparent vellum. Fabulous price were paid for some of the more expensive fans. Paris is still the leading city of the world in the manufacture of fans. So far as comfort and convenience are concerned, there is no fan that surpasses the ordinary palm leaf. Such fans come chiefly from the tropical regions of America and India. They are trimmed to shape. The edge is protected from fraying by binding with a slender strip of bamboo or rattan.