AMERICAN BLOWER COMPANY

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1 1921 AMERICAN BLOWER COMPANY SIROCCO CENTRIFUGAL FAN CIBSE Heritage Group

2 AMERICAN BLOWER COMPANY The Huyett & Smith Connection Mr Huyett, owner of a successful lumber business in Detroit, employed a young shop foreman Wright D Smith who developed an exhaust fan for the removal of wood shavings. It had a double cut-off and double discharge and (was) believed by Mr Smith to have a high efficiency and wonderful possibilities. Patents were obtained and in 1881 a co-partnership was formed by Huyett and Smith to manufacture and sell the fan. The W D Smith later U.S. Patent of 1886

3 The W D Smith U.S. Patent of 1886

4 It was Huyett who funded the venture while Smith was the inventive genius. Over the next ten years, the Company manufactured a number of heating and ventilating systems, including the 1888 patented disc fan blower and hot blast apparatus. Huyett & Smith hot blast apparatus, patented in 1888

5 Huyett & Smith also manufactured low pressure steam engines, but in 1895 the Huyett & Smith Manufacturing Company became the American Blower Company.

6 Davidson & Company Ltd & the Sirocco Fan In Belfast, at what he later named his Sirocco Works, Samuel Cleland Davidson ( ) devised a low-pressure multivane curved blade fan which he patented in His fan became one of the most successful fans of this period and notable for its quiet operation. The Sirocco Fan with multiblade vane wheels and wide configuration (Engineering Review, May 1908)

7 Technical Note on the Sirocco Fan This is the Introductory Note on the design of the Sirocco Impeller from the textbook Fans, Bruno Eck, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1973.

blade design and the production of single-inlet and double-inlet configurations.

9 Sirocco Engineering Company of New York The Company obtained the U.S. rights to market Samuel Davidson s centrifugal fan. During the first decade of the 20 th century, the Sirocco fan went through numerous modifications, including changes to the blade design and the production of single-inlet and double-inlet configurations. In 1908, the Sirocco rights were sold to the American Blower Company. Sirocco Engineering promoted Davidson s Patent Sirocco Centrifugal Fans (Engineering Review, September 1906)

10 American Blower Company The Company continued to develop heating and ventilating systems. The ABC System of Heating and Ventilating featured strongly in its advertising and used slogans such as ABC Disc Ventilating Fans and The ABC Fan System of Heating. American Blower also offered a complete line of steam heating systems and a variety of low-speed and high-speed electric and steam fan-motor drives. American Blower had offices in Detroit s David Whitney Building and in 1898 was operating from premises at 70 Gracechurch Street in London.

11 1902

12 1902

14 1898

15 1898

1899 REFERENCES 1973 Fans, Bruno Eck, (from the German) Pergamon Press, Oxford 1994 Heat & Cold: Mastering the Great Indoors, Chapter Seven: Nineteenth-Century Heating, Ventilating and Mechanical

16 1899 REFERENCES 1973 Fans, Bruno Eck, (from the German) Pergamon Press, Oxford 1994 Heat & Cold: Mastering the Great Indoors, Chapter Seven: Nineteenth-Century Heating, Ventilating and Mechanical Cooling, Barry Donaldson and Bernard Nagengast, ASHRAE Engineering Review, magazine USA U.S. Patent Office Victorian Heating Engineers, Davidson & Company of Belfast, CIBSE Heritage Group website, Davison & Company, Graces Guide Footnote There is a book (not viewed): Air conditioning and Engineering: a Treatise of the Technique of Conditioning and Mechanical Movement of Air and the Transmission of Power. Published by American Blower Corporation, 1956

17 The derelict Detroit Factory of American Blower in 2015

18 APPENDIX I A listing by the American Blower Company (Trade Mark Sirocco) of early Patent dates. 1901: 27 th November 1901: 30 th April; 4 th June; 30 th July; 27 th August; 31 st December 1902: 21 st January 1903: 10 th November 1904: 14 th June 1905: 19 th October 1906: 15 th March 1908: 26 th May APPENDIX II To illustrate the development of the centrifugal fan by the American Blower the full text of a Patent is shown on the pages which follow. This is U.S. Patent 2,155,631 of April 25, 1939 granted to Edward L Anderson for a BLOWER (Filed June 20, 1936) assigned to the American Blower Corporation.

JAMES HOWDEN & COMPANY THE FAN MAKERS

JAMES HOWDEN & COMPANY THE FAN MAKERS by Brian Roberts, CIBSE HERITAGE GROUP In 1854, James Howden set up as a consulting engineer and in the same year established James Howden & Company as a manufacturer