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• 1 media/Gray_Bg.png 2025-03-14T13:42:20-04:00 Evolution of Fan and Electrical Safety 65 plain 2025-03-27T13:53:56-04:00 1882 - 1969 While cooling systems evolved, so did fan and electrical safety. The initial 1882 electric tabletop fan by Schuyler Wheeler was extremely expensive and required a significant amount of electricity to run, yet was viewed as extraordinary due to its novelty at the time. In Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything, Salvatore Basile also describes Wheeler’s invention as “frightening . . . from a personal-safety standpoint, with exposed motor works, two metal blades that revolved at 2,000 rpm . . . and no safety grille whatsoever.” The lack of safety requirements is evident in Wheeler’s design choices.
  
  The Canadian Engineering Standards Association (CESA), which is known today as the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), emerged in 1919 to improve safety across various rapidly developing areas. In 1927, CESA published the Canadian Electrical Code, Part I, Safety Standard for Electrical Installations, reflecting the greater need for increased electrical safety at the time. In 1959, CSA-C22.2 No. 113, Fans and ventilators was released under Part II of the Canadian Electrical Code. Guidelines for desk fans, along with several other kinds of fans, were outlined within this document. We speculate that it may have contained requirements regarding power and wiring for desk fans.

  
  Safety of Torcan Fans

  Taking a closer look at Torcan fans, safety certainly appears to be a consideration. Unlike the first tabletop fan, the motor is enveloped in casing and the fan blades are encompassed by a cage. Another Torcan fan model, as advertised in a 1958 issue of Ottawa Citizen, completely lacks a safety cage and instead has rubber blades. These fans are described as “safer to operate”, which seems to imply that previous Torcan fans could improve in terms of safety. This rubber-bladed fan is also stated to be CSA approved.
  Returning to the Torcan 886P, despite it having metal fan blades, the openness of the steel cage is similar to American fans from around 30 years prior. This suggests that safety guidelines remained lenient at the time of the Torcan 886P’s production. Looking at fans promoted in the 1960s, a Torcan box fan in a 1960 issue of the Ottawa Citizen is advertised as “childproof” and appears to have a mesh-like cage covering the fan blades. In a 1969 issue of Quebec’s newspaper the Nouvelle Revue, the cages of the pictured 8” and 10” Torcan fans appear just as open as that of the Torcan 886P. Notably, the 8” fan is described as “pliable” in French, which translates to “foldable” in English. Perhaps this feature influenced the design of this more modern fan cage.