Harry Houdini Once Escaped From Eight Tire Chains, Two Steel Car Wheels, And A Crapload Of Padlocks

At this moment, the world outside my window is a high-albedo (not libido, I’m told) sea of white, an icy, chilly wonderland that’s pretty effectively shut down this town. I went sledding with the kid yesterday, and it was kind of ideal for that: not much snow but a good bit of ice, making a nice cronchy, slick surface ideal for sending you down a hill at high speeds, ending up in a ditch by the side of the road. Good for sledding, terrible for driving, maybe unless you have tire chains, which I don’t think I still have? So let’s talk about tire chains here for a moment, and their strange tie-in with the greatest escape artist of the 20th century.

I’ve only used tire chains a few times, most memorably when I drove my old Beetle up to Yosemite years ago in the winter, and found myself slowly sliding sideways on the winding mountain roads. I remember putting on the chains was a significant ass-pain, but the difference they made in traction was pretty dramatic. They work. And they have worked since 1904, when they were invented by one man named Weed.

Harry Delyne Weed was working at his cousin’s machine shop, Marvin & Casler Machine Shop, when he got the idea to develop chains that would wrap around tires to provide better grip, having been inspired by seeing people wrap ropes, cords, or even vines around their tires when stuck in mud or snow. Using the resources and equipment of the machine shop, Weed developed the chains, which were designed to be wrapped around partially-deflated tires, and made secure when the tires were re-inflated.

As he describes in his 1904 patent, the chains “provide a flexible and collapsible grip or tread composed entirely of chains linked together and applied to the sides and periphery of the tire and held in place solely by the inflation of the tire, and which is reversible.”

Tire chains were tremendously helpful to drivers in an age when roads were still often absolute garbage, regardless of the season, and helped drivers in cars with skinny tires and tread designs that were haphazard at best and superstitious at worst. The Weed Tire Chain company was also not above employing a bit of scare tactics to get people to buy their chains:

I mean, they’re not necessarily wrong there: tire chains could prevent your car from spinning out and getting crunched into slag by a streetcar, sure. They certainly can’t hurt!

They also played on the more financial instead of safety ramifications, too, showing the remorse of a man who has transformed his car into a big pile of junk, especially when being eyed by that terrifying-looking junk vendor there, in his wagon, pulled by some beast too horrific to be actually included in the ad. I’m guessing it was some sort of barely-tamed griffin with clipped wings and a horrible disposition.

Weed also ran ads targeted at chronic worriers:

The first drop of rain? Really? I’d at least wait a little bit to see if it was actually going to keep raining before going through the non-trivial hassle of putting those chains on, but then again, isn’t that what the guy whose car was turned into junk was thinking?

Also, I appreciate the visual economy of this ad, which was pretty unusual for the time. Those hand-cut photographic elements are well done, and I’m curious how they managed that gradiant fade-out on the steering wheel there? It’s very nicely done.

Oh, but I promised you a Harry Houdini tie-in! I haven’t forgotten! You all know Houdini, right? Perhaps the most famous escape artist of all time? Sure you do. Well, in 1908, the Weed Tire Chain company issued a challenge to the great Houdini, either as a publicity stunt or to satisfy some personal kink; perhaps both:

Dear Sir:

Will you accept a challenge under the following conditions?

We purpose to enmesh you in a number of our Weed Chain Tire Grips.

These chains have a series of loops on them, and we wish you to put your head through one, your arms and legs through others, and finally lock the different chains about your body.

Locks to be furnished by us.

We should also suggest that you permit us to further bind you, in two steel-rimmed automobile wheels, the tires to be covered with our chains.

While it is not our intention to question your wonderful ability, we are positive there is no possible way in which you can escape or slip from these chains, for the reason that they are built to prevent the heaviest of auto-mobiles, at times weighing a ton and a half, from slipping or skidding. We are more than satisfied that we have proposed an impossible task and therefore await your reply to our challenge with much interest.

Yours very truly,

WEED CHAIN TIRE GRIP CO.

What a strange career to have where you receive letters from auto parts suppliers stating “we purpose to enmesh you” in a bunch of chains, but that’s how Harry rolled. Houdini agreed to the challenge, and on April 10, 1908, at the Keith-Proctor East 125th Street Theater in New York, Houdini was wrapped in six Weed Tire Chains, and then two steel-rimmed car wheels were placed around him, and then, just to really be sure, he was clapped in leg irons, and all of this was padlocked with 24 Yale padlocks. The whole mess looked like this:

He looks pretty secure to me.

Incredibly, it only took Houdini 29 minutes or so to escape this tire chain confinement, after which he had to be walked offstage by two handlers, and in Weed’s company magazine they note, with a touch of hurt feelings, “he could not speak or even publicly acknowledge the magnificent floral piece presented to him by his challengers.” I’m sorry he didn’t thank you for the flowers, fellas.

There was a re-match in Philadelphia a few months later, where the Weed Tire Chain Company proposed:

So now they want eight tire chains, two wheels, and as many handcuffs and padlocks as they feel like? Damn, Weed.

Incredibly, Houdini got free again, though there’s no record of whether or not he said how much he liked the flowers that time.