INVENTING HOUDINI

Houdini invented the stunt shown in this well-edited footage. (There's also a good shot of his famous electric smile.) We found the footage and some startling Houdini info on a charming website called The Yesteryear Gazette.

In contrast to recent phonus-bolonus presentations of Houdini's life, The Yesteryear Gazette ("Yesterday's News Today!") actually breaks news about our pal Harry. More accurately we should say it reprints old news. But old news you didn't know is still news, right? Anyway it was news to us that Houdini is credited with inventing two everyday items that millions of people have used for many years: 

 He thinks the greatest thing he ever did was inventing a diving suit from which the diver can escape. He is handing over his invention to the government. Among other things he invented the wardrobe trunk and the double-colored typewriter ribbon....

                          -- New York Tribune, Dec. 28, 1919

Wait, what? He invented the wardrobe trunk, like the one up in the attic? AND the red-and-black typewriter ribbon, like the one we used for ages? AND the diving suit? Not to mention all the magic?

This is why Houdini's name lives on forever. Not because he was a great showman, though he was. Nor that he was a great actor, which he wasn't. Nor that he was or wasn't a spy. Nor that he was an inventor, a scientist, a bodybuilder, an acrobat, a littérateur.... He was all of these and more. 

In a word, Houdini was a man. Not a "man in quotation marks" but a man in the fullest sense of the word. By developing all his inner possibilities, he attained the highest degree of human achievement. He was not supernatural. He was supernormal. He remains an inspiration to all.




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(Images: Fantasma Magic via Yesteryear Gazette, Library of Congress)




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