Houdini didn't just escape from dangerous situations. He also tried to invent a better way to escape from one.
An Escape Artist Designs an Escape Suit
Harry Houdini spent much of his career thinking about restraints, locks, confined spaces and underwater escapes. So perhaps it isn't surprising that he also turned his attention to the cumbersome diving suits of his era.
His invention was officially called a "Diver's Suit." The design was intended to give a diver a way to quickly free himself from the suit while underwater if something went wrong.
Houdini was listed as the inventor. He filed his application on June 30, 1917, and U.S. Patent No. 1,370,316 was granted on March 1, 1921.
Houdini designed the suit in two main sections: an upper body section and a lower body section. The two sections were joined at the waist by a fastening system that formed an air-tight and water-tight connection.
The important difference was that the connection could be released by the diver himself. In an emergency, he could operate an exterior lever while submerged, separate the two sections and begin freeing himself from the suit.
Built With Escape in Mind
Houdini's patent was designed around a problem he understood very well: how to get out.
After releasing the waist connection, the diver could step out of the lower portion of the suit and then pull himself free of the upper portion.
Houdini even intended the surrounding water to help. As water rushed into the separated sections, it exerted a force that helped displace the suit and allowed the diver to extract himself more quickly.
"The invention relates to deep sea diving suits or armors, and its object is to provide a new and improved diver's suit arranged to permit the diver, in case of danger for any cause whatever, to quickly divest himself of the suit while being submerged and to safely escape and reach the surface of the water."
Houdini Put the Escape to the Test
In the patent, Houdini stated that actual tests had shown that not only a diver, but even an inexperienced person, could escape from the suit while submerged in less than 45 seconds.
More Than a Magician
Houdini is remembered primarily as the world's most famous escape artist, but his diving suit patent reveals another side of him: the practical problem-solver.
He looked at a piece of equipment designed to keep a diver safely enclosed and approached it from the opposite direction: What happens if the diver suddenly needs to get out?
The result was an invention unmistakably shaped by the mind of an escape artist.
