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.
What a stupid marketing campaign!
You want to impress people, set up two film cameras, one at the bottom and one at the summit of a picturesque hill and have two identical cars, one with chains and one without, make their way up and back down. That would have impressed me more.
No need to get Mr. Houdini involved in such nonsense. I mean, if he can get out, maybe my smart Michelins will figure out a way.
He could have instead tried to confound the world by getting through a man trap at a data center in SOHO or something.
Reading this article I could just see an Onion story in my head: “Modern Day Houdini Escapes from Locked Tesla.”
So did Houdini do this sort of shit for free?
I mean really? That’s a lot of crap to be subjected to just for grins and frozen Totino’s pizza. YMMV I guess.
Well it was in a theater, and presumably he got paid the same as for any other performance.
Chains in the RAIN? Was that really a thing?
I guess is you are on rutted, muddy dirt or gravel roads they’d be helpful. Maybe that was the intention. But I also was thinking about pavement and how much worse they would make things. Those thin rounded tires don’t have much of a hydroplaning risk.
Back in the 19-oughts, there wasn’t a lot of pavement to worry about. 🙂
In the 1970s-1980s there were road signs regarding the use of chains and studded tires – either prohibiting or requiring, depending on location and/or conditions. The traction enhancers work[ed] well in snow and ice but the idea was to minimize the damage the metal bits would do to asphalt and concrete roadways when the surfaces were clear.
Since then tires have improved dramatically and there is much less need for ferrous accoutrement.
I’ve heard of those signs being around still in the Rockies and Sierras, but I haven’t seen one outside of a couple roads in Yellowstone.
I remember my mom saying that back in the day they wouldn’t let you on any of the roads going anywhere near the grand canyon without chains on hand, but again I don’t remember seeing the signs when I was there. Better tires are probably part of that, but being Arizona I’m surprised it isn’t still a thing. Maybe they put the signs out based on weather forecasts now
I remember chain control on the way to Tahoe in the winter. When I was a kid my mom had to explain why the chains were on the front wheels of the MG 1100. It turned into 20 minutes of show and tell. I think it was the first front wheel drive car they had seen.
Chain controls are still very common on highways 50 and 80 going between the SF Bay Area and Tahoe. They’ll require them during any storm that involves any significant snowfall, and you’ll get turned around if you don’t have them on the car when you get to the control point. Exceptions are made for cars/trucks with all four wheels driven and snow tires. Of course, the problem there is that all wheel drive and snow tires don’t slow people down the way chains do, and the overwhelming majority of vehicles spinning into snow banks on the sides of the road are cars and trucks with all wheel drive and snow tires.
Oh, yeah! I’m a “Sacamenna Kid” since 1989, even though I grew up in Fresno County. (“Fog? That’s not fog. Lemme tell ya about real fog!”)
Snowstorms coming in usually mean chain controls on both I-80 and US 50 going over into Reno and Tahoe, respectively. There are lots of people with lucrative side hustles, putting on and removing chains at the usual altitudes; CHP and CalTrans even put long, wide sidings on the freeways, there—complete with floodlights. The “chain monkeys” would do the cold, wet work of wrangling your chains for you, for a fee. You don’t even have to get out of the car!
It made sense, too. The installers were locals, who knew the conditions and could dress for the weather. Maybe even bring their camper or trailer along, to warm up in occasionally. If you were heading up to Donner Summit for a weekend of skiing, the $50 – 100 fee meant you arrived dry, refreshed, and relaxed.
But it was a race against time, to be sure. Chain controls were always just on the shoulders of the complete shutdown of the roadway. So, you took your chances. Leave too late, and when you get to the chain control station CHP would turn you around and send you back down the hill. Leave too early and you wasted money on chains you didn’t use, and there’s no snow. (The installers sometimes sold chains, but usually they just installed the ones you brought. They take a lot of ribbing, but they truly are experts at their craft.)
So, you’d listen to the familiar elevations/locations for chain controls as they crept down the mountain: Kingvale; Cisco Grove; Emigrant Gap/Nyack; Blue Canyon (oh, the poor TV crew, trapped! …with a warm hotel room waiting nearby and an expense account for meals!); Gold Run; Colfax (I used to run an ambulance out of that town, but only in the summer; I’m a confirmed flatlander); Weimar; and, finally, Applegate. The freeway was usually closed long before snow getting down that low, though.
Still, you learned to accommodate. You watched the long-range forecasts. You made sure to put the right-sized chains in your SUV, and you checked that they weren’t rusty. The SUV was prepped for getting stuck overnight. And most importantly, you were ready to cancel the trip as the moment approached. Having Thanksgiving dinner next year was more important than having it tomorrow.
Oh, and Highway 50? Even though it’s a bit lower in elevation, CHP closed that winding, two-lane widowmaker as soon as the first snow started to stick on the pavement. Don’t even bother.
Yeah, funny how the TV crews always end up at Blue Canyon. And it’s not like there’s anything much there more than the offramp.
When the mountains of Southern California get snow the Highway Patrol sets up chain checks on the roads leading up to them.
Woo hoo! Look at that pavement fly!
Yeah, back then the gain in rain was mainly from the chains. 🙂
By George, she’s got it!
One of my grad school profs was the lead language consultant in that movie. He was awesome. RIP Peter.
*boggle*
What movie?
My Fair Lady, which popularized the rain in Spain phrase.
“It still should be”
–LA Drivers
“Richard” is a much better middle name than “Delyne” in my opinion.
When I was a kid in New England, the school buses all had chains in winter, I remember standing waiting for the bus with several inches of snow still on the road, and it showed up, and I got on. Listening for school closings when we had several inches of snow on the road set me up for future disappointments. Like they have to close right? The plows haven’t even come by yet, nope, your school wasn’t on the list, put on your moonboots and trudge on out to the stop.
“And Springfield Elementary…..My Dear Watson Detective School. That is all.”
Early 20th century marketing:
“We publicly challenge you to increasingly difficult feats using our products to restrain you, the results of which will either discredit your profession and prove our quality; or, if you succeed, we shall continue to offer even greater challenges for some reason!”
Early 21st century marketing:
“@HarryBallz yo thinking bout a collab HMU on socials this idea gonna blow up @420Chains @LegalWeed @ChainOfFools”
a month later…
“Hey guys it’s Harry, before today’s Get Ready With Me, I wanted to tell you about these amazing tire chains available in over 20 different colors….”
I bet his unboxing videos going from the inside out would be fire, though.
LMAO
That guy in the “first drop of rain” ad looks like he’s not sure whether that’s rain, blood, or bird poop.
He probably drives a Renault; back then they leaked oil from absolutely everywhere.
Well to be fair, he is just a floating head, so blood is certainly a possibility. In any case I would find being a floating confusing to start with “ Oh fine, and now there’s a drip? As though I don’t have enough to deal with!”