Behold Butz’s Damper-Flapper

“Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn’t exist. It’s the permutations that matter.”
-Umberto Eco

360 degrees — a full revolution. That’s the notable feature of this space heater, which otherwise provides basic fan-forced heat at a good price. Presumably 360-degree heat is superior to plain-old 180-degree heat in situations where you want to put it in the middle of the room.

But a commonplace feature of this R2-lookin’ unit harkens to the origin of the brand that makes it: The thermostat. We take thermostats for granted. Want the room to remain 72 degrees? Set the thermostat and it shall be so. Once upon a time, however, heaters only featured an “on” and “off” switch, and if you wanted a specific temperature you needed to do the monitoring yourself.

Enter Minneapolis’s Albert Butz, a partner at – get this – The Butz and Mendenhall Hand Grenade Fire Extinguisher Company (someone please figure out WTF that means and post it in the comments). Butz invented a revolutionary product called the damper-flapper, a device for automatically controlling the output of coal furnaces based on the outside temperature. Thermostats had existed in some form earlier, but Butz’s was the first example of the modern electric version. How did the damper-flapper work?

“When a room cooled below a predetermined temperature, a thermostat closed the circuit and energized an armature. This pulled the stop from the motor gears, allowing a crank attached to the main motor shaft to turn one-half revolution. A chain connected to the crank opened the furnace’s air damper to let in air. This made the fire burn hotter. When the temperature rose to the preset level, the thermostat signaled the motor to turn another half revolution, closing the damper and damping the fire.”

Of course.

Butz patented the damper-flapper in 1886 but abandoned the business and gave the patent to his attorneys, who eventually sold it to some patent trolls for $1, who then created the Minneapolis Heat Regulatory Company, who then sold to another Minneapolis heating firm … the Honeywell Heating Specialties Company.

The success of the electric thermostat catapulted Honeywell into the corporate stratosphere where it would play in such industries as aerospace, nuclear weapon manufacture (yup), computing, and tons of other shit unrelated to home heating.

And here, on this $17 widget, you behold a reincarnation of Butz’s pride from the very brand that first brought it to the world. It all comes full circle.