A Punkha with cord, Takhat Vilas, Mehrangarh Fort Palace, Jodhpur. In India, a punkah wallah or punkahwallah (, ) is a manual fan operator. The most desired were deaf because they were always within earshot of confidential conversations. A punkah is a type of ceiling fan used in the Indian subcontinent before the electric fan.
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3rd class passengers did not have reserved seats. Punkah fans were provided only in 1st and 2nd class. The cars were fitted with vacuum brake and passenger alarm signal.
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At the foot of the veranda a chokra lay on his back in the sun, pulling the punkah rope with his heel and shading his face with a broad strip of banana leaf.
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Barbar Bhatti (born 14 February 1949), also spelled Babar Bhatti is a British actor of Pakistani origin. He is best known for the part of punkah wallah Rumzan in the BBC sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum, his first role.
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One of two punkah suspended in the sanctum above the idol of Yogmaya: one inscribed Delhi and the other inscribed Haryana, during Phool Walon Ki Sair, a syncretic festival of Hindus and Muslims held in October every year in Mehrauli The annual Phoolwalon-ki-sair Festival (Festival of flower-sellers), which commences from the dargah of Sufi saint, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki also in Mehrauli, every autumn (Oct-Nov). First started in 1812, the festival has today, become an important inter-faith festivals of Delhi, and includes offering a floral punkah to the deity at the Yogmaya temple.'Phoolwalon Ki Sair' begins in Delhi The Times of India, 2 November 2006.
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It was developed from research performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by Cresson Kearny and published in Nuclear War Survival Skills. The basic principle is to create a flat surface with vanes that close when moving air and open when going back to the starting position. The design was derived from the punkah.
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It was fitted out with cane furniture and a tea table. The main hall was cooled by a punkah (which is still in use today) and was operated by an Aboriginal servant. Rooms opened off each side of the breezeway and a wide fly-wired veranda enclosed the building. Today the veranda is enclosed by wooden framed sliding opaque windows.
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Two painted aluminium air conditioning ducts run along the length of ceiling aside a suspended motorised fan system (a punkah). Pendant lights and fluorescent tubes hang from the ceiling. A central staircase leads to the lower level which was inaccessible at the time of assessment. The interior of the restaurant building is an open space similar to the retail building but larger in scale.
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Amanat built himself a small cottage in a forest area in Chittagong to live in. He managed to get a job as a punkah wallah at the Chittagong Judge Court, and preferred a simple lifestyle without attracting much attention. It was from this career at the court, that he was nicknamed Khan Saheb. However, he later gave up his job, dedicating more of his life towards religious devotion.
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The Residency in the 1910s Chief Minister of Penang, Lim Guan Eng, at The Residency on 9 April 2018 for the dissolution of the Penang State Legislative Assembly. The Residency, designed by a British Army engineer, Major Sir Maurice Alexander Cameron, was constructed in 1888. The mansion took two years to complete and cost $48,000 (Straits dollar). Fittings and furnishing pushed the overall cost of the mansion to $81,000, and includes a manually-powered Indian punkah within its Banquet Hall.
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On 28 February 1856, the Government of India promulgated legislation to grant what was then termed as "exclusive privileges for the encouragement of inventions of new manufactures". On 3 March 1856, a civil engineer, George Alfred DePenning of 7, Grant's Lane, Calcutta petitioned the Government of India for grant of exclusive privileges for his invention — "An Efficient Punkah Pulling Machine". On 2 September, DePenning, submitted the Specifications for his invention along with drawings to illustrate its working. These were accepted and the invention was granted the first ever Intellectual Property protection in India.
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Another folk legend is that of Mughal Emperor Akbar II's (r. 1806-1837) association with the temple. His wife was distraught at the incarceration and exile of her son Mirza Jehangir who had fired from a Red Fort window at the then British Resident that had resulted in the killing of the bodyguard. Yogamaya had appeared in her dream and the Queen praying for her son's safe return had vowed to place Punkah made of flowers at the Yogmaya temple and in the nearby Muslim shrine of Qutbuddin Bhaktiar Khaki.
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The William Johnson House was the home of William Johnson, a 19th-century free African American barber and resident of Natchez whose diary has been published. Melrose was the estate of John T. McMurran, a lawyer, state senator, and planter who lived in Natchez from 1830 until the Civil War. Both Melrose and the William Johnson House contain furnishings related to life in antebellum Natchez and other exhibits. The collection at Melrose's two-story Greek Revival mansion and its slave quarters include painted floor cloths, mahogany, a punkah, a set of Rococo Revival parlor furniture, a set of Gothic Revival dining room chairs, and bookcases with books dating to the 18th century.
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Punkah style ceiling fans are based on the earliest form of a fan, which was first invented in India around 500 BC. These were cut from an Indian palmyra leaf which forms its rather large blade, moving slowly in a pendular manner. Originally operated manually by a cord and nowadays powered electrically using a belt-driven system, these punkahs move air by going to and fro. In comparison to a rotating fan, it creates a gentle breeze rather than an airflow. Ceiling fan originally installed in the dining room of the house in Perry's Camp, turned by the water wheel The first rotary ceiling fans appeared in the early 1860s and 1870s in the United States.
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Rosedown's floorplan is in the French or Early Louisiana design in contrast to the American scheme of a hall through the center of the house. The plan has a main entrance hall, decorated with block-printed wallpaper by Joseph Dufour et Cie of Paris, with an elliptical mahogany staircase to the second floor, a parlor to the right, music room to the left, and an office, butler's pantry and dining room in the rear that features a punkah. Upstairs are the family bedrooms. The north wing houses a guest bedroom with an en-suite bathroom that features an early form of a shower supplied with water from a cistern on the roof.
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Patent drawing for a Fan Moved by Mechanism, November 27, 1830 The punkah fan was used in India about 500 BCE. It was a handheld fan made from bamboo strips or other plant fiber, 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 Huan (fl. 180 CE) invented a manually operated rotary fan with seven wheels that measured 3 m (10 ft) in diameter; in the 8th century, during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), the Chinese applied hydraulic power to rotate the fan wheels for air conditioning, while the rotary fan became even more common during the Song Dynasty (960–1279).Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 99, 134, 151, 233.
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