[oldlinux]

These fans were certainly a luxury item for the time. The average price listed there was about $30. Adjusting for inflation, that's the equivalent of about $750 today (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=inflation+since+1911+f...).

Put another way, it was a few weeks worth of the average salary for a railway or steel worker of the era (https://ahundredyearsago.com/2012/09/17/average-salaries-191...).

[Cthulhu_]

Even Dyson's overpriced fans aren't THAT expensive nowadays.

That said, I do think there is a market for quality products in a 10-20x price range, products built to last instead of built to be cheap and good enough for a couple years.