Where did these air ducts come from and when did people start using them? The modern ductwork we use began as the creation of flues and chimneys used by the Chinese and Greek in the 7th century.

When was the vent invented?

The concept of negative-pressure ventilation had been around for hundreds of years, but the device that became widely used — the 'Drinker respirator' — was invented in 1928 by Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw, professors at the School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.

Did they have ventilators in 1940s?

Ventilators designed for positive-pressure invasive ventilation became available in the 1940s and 1950s. Figure 11 shows some of the early models. The key distinguishing feature of these early invasive ventilators was that they provided only volume-control ventilation (Table 1).