Fan (machine) the airflow from the fans. Thus, fans may become ineffective at cooling the body if the surrounding air is near body temperature and contains high humidity. The punkah fan was used in India about 500 BCE. It was a handheld fan made from bamboo strips or other plant fibre, that could be rotated or fanned to move air. During British rule, the word came to be used by Anglo-Indians to mean a large swinging flat fan, fixed to the ceiling, and pulled by a servant, called the punkawallah. For purposes of air conditioning, the Han Dynasty craftsman and engineer Ding
Indian rope trick itself, but about what he called the 20th-century legend of it being Indian, the fame of the trick, which peaked in the 1930s. It is this fame, chapter 8 of his book claimed, which originated from Wilkie's hoax. The magician John Nevil Maskelyne in 1912 reported a possible explanation for the trick from a witness to whom he had spoken. It was suggested that the position of the Sun was crucial to the trick: The jugglers brought a coil of what appeared to be a large rope. As they uncoiled it and held it up it became stiff ; it