who introduced curvy bladed fans first?

[Tais]

Lately i've been wondering which company was the first to introduce curved blades to the market, the earliest i can recall is 50s and 60s SMC but i believe there were some before that

[Jean Lemieux]

I would guess it's Marelli. As soon as they started to make ceiling fans in 1898 they had curved blades.

This is their first ceiling fan in 1898:
www.fantique.com/en/prodotti/62/marelli-flower-dc--italy--1898.html

And they eventually introduced it to metal blades. Here's an exemple on a 140 cm model from about the mid to late 1920s.

[Adam D.]

Well we could say we know who invented the first GE vent fans.. We all know GE, but the style didn't really take off until Casablanca made there Zephry, and then the Asian factories started making GE ven fans... I would say it took off when Tat and SMC started making industrials in the 1960s..

[Cole S.]

Nov 25, 2012 6:15:07 GMT -5 Adam D. said:

Well we could say we know who invented the first GE vent fans.. We all know GE, but the style didn't really take off until Casablanca made there Zephry, and then the Asian factories started making GE ven fans... I would say it took off when Tat and SMC started making industrials in the 1960s..

This is a fair point, along the lines of what I was thinking. Marelli did have them first, but the concept didn't take off until the modern concept of what we call the industrial fan was introduced, almost certainly based on the Marelli concept. It was after that point that almost every manufacturer who did metal blade models offered a curved blade variant. In my opinion, it's not always just a question of who did it first, but also a factor of when it took off.