From the Vault: Invention of the Chainsaw, Part 1

My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be looking at an invention. This will be one of our invention episodes. And Rob, I think this is an idea we've been kicking around at least for a couple of years now, and it's finally happening. That's right. We've been talking talking about doing the Invention of the chainsaw for Halloween ever since we were doing

actual invention podcast episodes in a separate podcast feed. Um. Because the chainsaw, for all its merits as a useful tool,

is also heavily associated with horror. I noticed something about the chainsaw, which is that it has a even just the evocation of the concept feels kind of obscene, Like when I make reference to the idea of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even apart from any knowledge of the contents of the movie, just the fact that it involves a chainsaw feels like I'm talking about something that maybe shouldn't

be mentioned. Does that make any sense? Yeah? Yeah, I mean we'll get more into like what the chainsaw is and what it comes to symbolize, particularly in American culture. I found a great source on that. I'm not not sure where where where we'll get into that in the discussion. But if you just tackle the the invention from you know, just look at the name of of the tool chain saw. You know, you're a combination of two already kind of

repellent or potentially repellent uh classifications of thing. One is used sometimes to restrain or to uh you know, to to bind, to weigh down, and the other is used to to sever and to cut, and now they're they've come together into one item. Uh So, just on a you know, almost like a you know, a very basement level of our linguistic processing, it's already a kind of repellent concept as and also the fact that it is.

We talk about the blade of the chainsaw, it is it is a blade that that cuts, even if your intent to cut is not you know, like it you technically don't have to really bear down too hard to do damage with the chainsaw. So it feels almost like it is uh embodying some of these ideas of like the sword that wants to cut, the sword that wants to drink and consume. Yeah, it has an inherent danger, like it suggests that not much force need be applied by the person wielding it, that it has a cutting

mind of its own. In fact, I think, though it doesn't really conjure the same grizzliness, you could accomplish the same kind of threat by calling it something like the

Texas lightsaber massacre. Well yeah, uh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean when we're talking to just about like, yeah, the there is a certain amount of similarity there the lightsaber, yeah, not necessarily requiring a lot of force to to do damage, to do a body um and then at the same time being being fairly dangerous to wield to the person

wielding it because that it literally cuts both ways. There. Now, one of the big reasons of course that we associate The Chainsaw with Horror is the N four film by Toby Hooper, which centered around a family of Texas cannibals, including their face, who runs them up with a chainsaw.

Though it will be clear, and this is something that I think is sometimes lost on folks who maybe haven't seen the original film or haven't seen it in a while, um or if only absorbed Texas Chainsaw Masker through like the public consciousness, because it's become one of those films where you don't really have to to have seen it to have some idea of what it is. But Leatherface only murders one person with a chainsaw. You wouldn't know that if you only knew Texas Chainsaw Masker from playing

the Atari game. Oh yeah, I have not, do you? Does does leather Face uh kill a lot of people with the chainsaw on that No, it's just a sort of clump of relatively large pixels that move around on a screen with sort of a barn background. From what I recall, it's been a long time, So that's the only media from the TC and franchise that you have engaged with. You're gonna have a very limited understanding. I think you may get some sort of beeps and boops

computer sounds, uh, simulating the chainsaw noise. But again I'm a little fuzzy on that. Yeah. So, and then the original leather Face only uses it as a murder weapon once. Uh. He uses it in another case to dismember what is either a corpse or a common hose individual. I can't remember which. Um. I think he may be dead at that point when he cuts him up, because most of the other killing that occurs in the film is there are other implements that are used, especially the hammer. That's

the one they talk about. The hammer is is best. Oh yeah, and I think certainly for the most shocking attack in the movie, when like he suddenly pops out from behind that sliding metal door, which is just oh god, just thinking about that gives me a shiver now. Um. But one of the other weird things about the chainsaw is, as we'll discuss in this episode about the history of this piece of technology in nineteen seventy four, at the time this movie was made, the widespread use of gas

powered chainsaws was actually fairly recent. I mean, this was a technology again that had been around in some sort of prototype form for a long time. But the widespread use was within living memory. It had only been the norm m in logging for maybe a couple of decades. Yeah, and that's I think that's that's that's key to keep in mind. Um. And then, like I said, I have I have a wonderful sore son on some of this later, Like the cultural idea of the chainsaw is very much

this this twentieth century adaptation. But um, as far as just chainsaws and horror movies go, I was looking into this little bit because I knew some of the precursors here, but I wasn't familiar with all of them. But believe it or not, Texas Chainsaw Massacre seventy four was not the first genre film to feature a bloody chainsaw. Uh. Film historians often point to a pair of different key for runners nineteen sixty eight, Dark of the Sun in

nineteen seventies, the Wizard of Gore. Now, were you familiar with Dark of the Sounja? No, I did not know this one, though I do know about Wizard of Gore. Okay, Well we'll start with Dark of the Sun, just very briefly. Dark of the Sun, which I have not seen, was an adventure film about mercenary areas during the Congo Crisis of sixty through Nive, which by the way, is also the setting of Warren Zevon's supernatural ballad rolling the headless

Thompson Gunner. In this film, though Peter Cartson plays a German mercenary, is like, I think he's the villain of the piece. And at one point he's in this fight with our hero played by Rod Taylor both mercenaries, and the German mercenary grabs a chainsaw, so we have a fight featuring a chainsaw, and the chainsaw was heavily featured

in the both the trailer and the poster for this film. Now, I wonder if it's significant that he's a German mercenary grabbing a chainsaw because some of the big early manufacturers of chainsaws were German firms, like like Steel. It's possible. The other film, The Wizard of Gore, this is a far more notorious film that I think a lot of horror buffs might at least have some um knowledge of.

Seventy splatter film by Schlock Legend Herschel Gordon Lewis about Montag the Magnificent, who in one scene cuts a woman in half with a chainsaw. It's like a magic act, except um, he's supposed to actually be cutting somebody in half. This is a well known gonzo b horror movie. I saw it many years ago, and it might be surprising since I love, you know, a good weird be horror movie. But I remember not particularly enjoying this film. I think it's just mostly about like a magician who who like

his magic tricks, are that he like kills people. Yeah? Yeah, it's mostly notable I think for being schlocked. Um. Now this next point is interesting as well, when it comes to sort of you know that the hard directors of this era. We we generally give Toby Hooper all the credit for for Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it's worth noting did Wes Craven's notorious nine film The Last House on the Left also beat Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the punch

with the chainsaw as horror weapon trope. There's at least there's one kill in the film, at least that involves a chainsaw. Now that's That's also not a film that I've seen, nor one I'm I'm planning to see, but I checked in on it and read the synopsis and it's like, yep, okay, chainsaw kill, it happened. Now. Texas chainsaw Masaker, of course, really just blew the doors off for chainsall horror. So in the wake of the first Texas chainsaw massacre, we just saw this reinforced time and

time again. Uh. Certainly by additional Texas chainsaw massacre films, but also by films and franchises such as The Evil Dead. Uh phantasm, especially Phantasm to um. The Doom video games are often brought up because you can use a chainsaw in those. And we should also give special mention to the nineteen eight film Pieces. Uh. This is a Spanish chainsaw film from the director of Slugs and the Pod People. Oh yeah, one Piker Simone. Uh. And I think I've seen this one. It's been a long time, but I

seemed I think I actually saw this one. Uh. And I don't think it made a lot of sense at the time, but it does feature a chainsaw and a chainsaw related plot. Now by mentioning the Evil Dead at least, I don't recall the first movie, but I assume this

is the case. It's definitely the case in the second movie that sort of flips the script because In these cases, it is not the evil killer, the villain of the movie, wielding a chainsaw, but it is the hero of the movie facing a bunch of sort of fluid filled demonic entities that that must wield the chainsaw and self defense. Right, yeah,

I mean, I guess you could make a case. I think the last House on the left it's a revenge murder that involves the use of a chainsaw, but still not quite the same as Ash taking up the chainsaw, as like the you know, the Holy weapon against the dead eyes, right, this is what will unleash the green goop from the from the demons. Now, I know what a lot of you are probably wondering at this point.

You're saying, thinking, well, this is all fiction, but how how often is the chainsaw actually used as a lethal instrument? And how frequently? Oh good lord, is that what we're wondering? Well, I was wondering it. Okay, no, no, it's a fair thing to wonder. Well, I think I there was. I remember when I was first sort of getting more well, I don't know, I was first getting into it. I was getting into horror a bit more in the mid nineties, and there was a chainsaw murder uh in the state

of Tennessee. I remember making the headlines. Yeah, so that might have you know. I think that was even at the time, I was like, oh, wow, this really happens. There are actual chainsaw maskers, I guess from time to time. Um, So I was looking into into this a little bit. And so for starters, there are a few obvious things about the chainsaw. Chainsaws are dangerous tools, and you should all and they should always be used with care and caution.

Those chainsaws that haunted attractions, they are chainless, or they certainly should be chainless. Um And I've often wondered, though, could you just get rid of the chainless chainsaw entirely and have the the guys that the haunted attractions just chase people around with leafblowers instead. I guess that that raises the question is it important to see it or is it important just to hear it. I have been here,

it's hearing it. I barely see the chainsaw. If it's leather face at the haunted attraction chasing you around with a leaf blower or just a motor of some sort, wouldn't that work? I have been chased by a chainsaw multiple times through I think a haunted corn field and some haunted woods. Uh, I don't know. It's it's fun to run from a chainsaw as long as you know that it's not actually gonna hurt you. But yeah, I guess it's a pretty simple thing, though. I wonder I've

thought about this before. So you take the chain off to render it harmless. It's just, you know, it's just the bar there doesn't actually have a cutting edge, and the motor is running without the chain. I wonder from a maintenance point of view, is that bad for the saw? Is that going to burn out the motor if there's

no chain on there? I wish I thought I could have checked in with our contacts that Another world in Atlanta and asked them, well, because I went this year and they had three chainsaws running outside of one house. You know, you expect one, you you you demand one, you expect might be a second, but you don't expect three. So that that caught me off guard. So one compromise position is they could have one chainless chainsaw that you can see, and that's enough to scare you, but then

you hear plenty of leaf blowers after that. That's this sounds good. Just leaf blowers in the vicinity. Yeah, so I was looking at a couple of sources on this, as reported by Cohler at All in Death by Chainsaw Fatal kickback Injuries to the Neck in the Journal of

Forensic Science back in two thousand four. At the time, they're reporting the two million new chainsaws were sold each year in the United States and this of course would augment the exit the number of existing chainsaws already in use, and this helped bring about twenty eight thousand chainsaw related injuries annually. Again, chainsaws are are dangerous tools. You have to use them properly, and even so mishaps can occur.

But even in the case of tools that require extreme caution like this, most of these injuries were not fatal. Correct um Accidental chainsaw deaths the road were extremely rare. Only ten of the cases they were looking at involved the head or the neck area, and the rest were lower extremities or hands. That's where you tend to see

these injuries. But as the article points out via two different case studies of fatal um injuries with chainsaws, kick back is the most common cause of injury and one of the greatest potential threats that can result than an accidental death. Kick Back is when the rotating chain of the chainsaw is stopped by contact with a more solid area or solid substance or something, you know, and which

rapidly throws the saw back toward the operator. Right, So I'd imagine safety training that you'd go through if you're gonna be operating a chainsaw would involve being able to sort of predict and guard against this kick back. Yeah. Now,

I've seen some different numbers as well. Um thing in a source that side of the U. S. Bureau of Labor report from twelve saying that resulted int in chainsaw injuries with one thousand, four hundred resulting in quote hospitalization or death and that's about four point six percent, and we don't know exactly what the fatality percentage of that would be. Um Plus, these are all just chainsaw related, so I'm assuming they can involve other things as well.

Like you're using a chainsaw on a ladder and then there's kick back, and then you know, someone falls off a ladder. Uh, you know that alone could be lethal without the chainsaw ever actually touching your body. And there may there may be some better numbers out there are some more recent numbers, but I think these do illustrate a point. Chainsaws can be extremely dangerous or even deadly, but fatalities are rare, and when it comes to the use in crimes, we're probably best to think back to

the original Texas chainsaw. Mascre leather Face uses the saw to dismember a dead body, but also in one murder. So in general, while the chainsaw is menacing and scary, it's generally not the most effective weapon available to an individual, uh, you know, if they're going to go out and commit murder. There is a book that I'm going to reference in this episode that that I used as as one of

my major sources. It's called Chainsaws, a History by David Lee, with some input by a chainsaw collector and historian named Mike Acres. It's kind of a coffee table book for chainsaw obsessives, with lavish photographs of those big, beautiful saws, and so this book has a lot of fun in it. But one of the things the authors point out in the introduction is the chainsaw is actually not an ideal weapon for massacres. First of all, because somebody would always

hear you coming. That's right, um, And sometimes it's hilarious in movies where you need a jump scare and they orchestrated jump scare with a chainsaw, It's like, how do you started that quickly? Yeah? Yeah, wouldn't they need to? You'd hear them like pulling the starter chain and stuff.

There was a video game years and years back called Manhunt that uh, the rock Star Games put out, and there's an individual that you end up encountering with the chainsaw, and I seem to recall that was the case there where he would suddenly jump out from behind something at you the chainsaw just going full throttle without ever having to actually start it. I think more accurate chainsaw enemy might be encountered in Resident Evil, for it's a guy with a bag on his head who's got a big chainsaw.

He comes at you, but you get to see him like starting it up first, he's pulling the chain and all that, not the chain, the cord, the starter and and some movies that's that plays really well because there's this, yeah,

the revenue. One of the things that's scary about just the sounds of the chainsaw is that idea that it's like it's gaining in intensity and ferocity you know, and so first it's starting under and then and then it gets you know, just reach just this peak of insanity than than Thank so, in the spirit of the season. Since we're starting off this discussion of talking about horror movies, I had to look up what is the actual model

of consumer chainsaw used in the Texas chainsaw massacre. I found an answer to this according to the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum's website. If I'm ever in town, I'll try to make it to that museum. Uh. They claim that the filmmakers put a black piece of tape over the brand

name to hide what it was. But apparently, if you know your chainsaws, it is clearly visible as a Pooh lawn three oh six A and so I pulled up a screenshot from Texas Chainsaw masker alongside a shot for you to look at Rob and I think, yeah, that is definitely the same saw. Um. The one thing I would not have been able to tell you was was the answer to the question what color is the chainsaw in the original TCM. Uh. My my mind would have

been like, I don't know, beige. I mean, I guess like that's the dominant color scheme of the film is beige and sometimes orange. Yes, exactly. So the original the film that they used in the Texas Chainsaw Masker looks like you can only really reproduce two colors. One is the color of sort of orange blood and the other is the color of like a rotting bale of hay. And so that's what I would have said. But no,

actually it is green. Uh. Strange kind of unusual color to to appear in the movie like this, And I guess for some reason that just fell out the back of my mind. But it is a notably green body around the engine and then a long straight bar and chain. Uh. And so the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum website rights quote. The pool On three oh six A was introduced in nineteen seventy in produced until nineteen eighty. The poula On Company was founded by lumberjack Claude Poulan in nineteen forty six.

The company was located in Shreveport, Louisiana, making the three oh six A a nice local option for a Texas chainsaw massacre. So this would have been a local saw, okay, Because I was wondering when you said Poulan, I was thinking this a French chainsaw that seems very unlike the sawyer clan to to to use an import but I didn't think about the possible Cajun connection. They're using Cajun technology,

which certainly makes it a more local option. As for actual chainsall murders, I'll just leave everyone else to research that that on your own time. There's there are plenty of like true crime articles and lists out there that have more information on all this, and you know, it's

all depressing stuff. But I did find it interesting that, uh, that sometimes there's kind of a fetishizing of the chainsaw even in this kind of in these kind of articles, in this kind of coverage, I found one that you talked about chainsaws as as as allowing um killing or murder to take place quote on an industrial scale, which

is a description that that is. But I feel is both right and wrong because on one level, I agree with that, you know, like we're talking about the lightsaber principle, you know that the machine is doing some of the work for you that you know it's an industrialization of

doing what a blade would do. But on the other hand, I feel like if you're talking about murder on an industrial scale, really, if you're if you're folk sing on the chainsaw and ignoring firearms and explosives in that discussion, and you're completely off, like like, I think firearms are the are the true uh innovation that allows murder on

an industrial scale. Yeah, And the words scale there would imply like actual numbers of cases, which, as you were saying, is not particularly the case, though I can see, of course the idea. I mean, it's what is again scary about the concept of the Texas chainsaw mask or it is the mechanization of violence, the sort of adding adding the uh, the internal combustion engine or the electric motor

to the to the to the murderer's agenda. Yeah. But at the same time, it kind of coming back to the impracticality of the chainsaw as a weapon, Like maybe that's one of the comforting things about this and other slashers. It's like, oh, they use impractical weapons. They these killers love to kill. But we'll probably hear them come in or have a good we'll have a better chance at outrunning them or somehow how smarting them if they insist

on using their these ludicrous killing techniques. I suspect that leather Face has not read his Poulan three oh six a safety manual and is not following proper safety procedure. I don't think you're supposed to run with the chainsaw revving. Hey, he pays for it, doesn't he consequences for that kind of recklessness? Yeah? Okay, Well, I guess we should turn

to discuss the invention of the chainsaw itself. And one thing we always like to do when we talk about an invention is to talk about what came before, what was the state of affairs that this invention had to come into to introduce new capabilities. And though chainsaws can have, of course many uses, there primarily today associated with logging. So I thought it would be good to start with a look at logging before the chainsaw. So a few

notes on logging terminology. I had to get this stuff straightened out so I would understand what say this this book by David Lee and Mike Acres was talking about in other sources I was looking at on the internet. So, um, so logging involves more just the process of cutting down an upright tree. The term for cutting down an upright tree at the base I've seen referred to as felling or falling a tree. But it doesn't stop there. You've also got the process of limbing, which is very important.

That's removing limbs from either a felled tree trunk or a or a tree trunk while it's still standing. And then this is a big part of the business. There's what's known as bucking. This is cutting a felled tree into logs of a specified length. And one reason it's important to call it the difference early on between felling and bucking is that when you imagine performing these two tasks, the saw has to be oriented in a different direction

for each one. So when you're felling a tree, the saw has to go horizontally through the tree when it's upright. When you're bucking a tree to cut it into logs of a specified length, you need to go up and down. It's a vertical cutting. This is, uh you know, pretty easy to do with a modern chainsaw, which is handheld

and very maneuverable. But if you were to imagine, say an earlier age, where people were trying to use um bulkier, more complex machinery that that had more moving parts and was harder to move around, maybe something you couldn't hold with just one person's arm strength, then the difference between felling and bucking becomes very significant. Now. Of course, even after that, after you've got a bucked piece of raw timber, Uh,

there's more work to do with the sawing. Of course, you can maybe split that log into lengthwise wedges, say for firewood, or you can do hewing, which is taking a bucked log and cutting it to have flat surfaces for use in building. Though hewing is a sort of archaic term that I think refers to a process in which you might use like an axe. And then of course they're sawing a bucked log into pieces of flat lumber that might be shipped or or immediately used in

some way. Uh. There's another wonderful term that I came across that I never knew before, and that term is curf k e r f uh Rob. Maybe you knew this word, but I did not. It's a word, Yeah, I I always you needed a word for this, and I didn't know what it was. A curve is the cut that is made while you're sawing something. So it's

that it's that unfinished cut through the wood. And and sometimes, uh, say, cutting down a tree will involve things that you have to do to the curve, for example, hammering a wedge into the curve to help make sure that the tree is bending in the right way and that it's not closing in on your saw and binding it. And one of the things that's been most interesting to me about about researching this is the surprising fact that well into the twentieth century, the most common tools for sawing and

bucking wood were manually powered tools. So even you know, within the memory of people who are alive today, the most common tools you would find used in logging would be the axe, the wedge, the springboard, and the springboard by the way, that this is an interesting device. This is a thing where you would sort of like cut a little uh notch into a tree, and you would put a board up on the tree so you could stand on it in order to better cut the trunk. So it's like not having to chop at the area

that's wider around the roots. Right. Yeah, so you could sort of position your body for for cutting or sawing higher up. But oh, but I didn't get to the to the last thing, which was by far, I think the most important of all these tools. It was the hand powered saw, and for large trees this was often the famous two man saw, known colloquially as the misery whip, which in the felling of larger trees, could be more than ten ft long with a handle at each end.

So this would be worked by two sawyers, each pulling from their side, just taking turns going back and forth to take down a redwood or you know whatever, giant tree. A lot of this logging was especially taking place up in the Pacific Northwest ESTs. A lot of the sawing innovations happened in places like Oregon, but you can imagine the giant trees there and two guys with a with a tin foot long cross cut saw, one handle at each end, and they're just working themselves to death on

this trunk. I feel like my my, my earliest and still clearest, like mental images of this particular type of saw comes from watching cartoons. I can't remember. It was like it was like Loony Tunes or Disney, you know, it was Chipmunks or whatever, But I remember like cartoon depictions.

It might even been like Woody Woodpeck or something. I don't know, but there were cartoon depictions of people using these saws and things getting out of control and the saw like bunching up or pulling someone through the um what through the curve if you will. Yeah, I mean some of the photographs you see of logging sites at this time, with people, you know, posing with their misery whips and their axes and everything, they look like something straight out of a car tune. I've attached a couple

of pictures for you to look at here. Rob One is a photo from circa nineteen o six, which is a couple of guys or three guys in the middle of cutting down a gigantic tree looks like it could be a redwood. I think this was a photo taken somewhere in the state of Washington. And uh and one guy is so they've they've cut It's not just a

flat curve. They've cut a wedge out of the tree, I think, to help it fall in the right direction when they when they finally get all the way through it, and one of the loggers is just lying down inside the wedge on this giant tree incredibly dangerously. I mean, one assumes they knew what they were doing and that this was a safe time to climb into the you know,

the death zone for a photo. But I also found an awesome picture of a misery whip in use from a photo on the website of a local history museum in Hood River County, Oregon. Uh So, Rob, if you, if you just take a look at this beast for a moment, it looks like a still from an upcoming Robert Egger's movie, you know, would be the follow up to The Lighthouse. It's about some kind of romantic shenanigans

between a logger and a beast of the forest. And uh this picture though, one of the things that were saying on the website is it might well be kind of posed for maximum effect. But it has two guys too, very uh surly looking fellas on each side of a misery whip. And then in the foreground there's a shotgun and then a bottle of clear liquid and then multiple axes one act just like sunk into the tree, sticking

out of it. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, And the guy on the left, he looks a little bit like the p coach from the TV show ap Bio. Oh I haven't seen that. Yeah, that's good. Well, yeah, I mean, speaking of physical education, I think these guys would be candidates for the President's Physical Fitness award, because wow, I mean imagining the physical exertion that goes in to sawing down just tree after tree all day long with these

hand powered crosscut saws, It's it's kind of hard to fathom. Yeah, indeed, and in grueling work, and then all the the the hazards that would be present in the job just but you know, by virtue of using these tools, but also

by felling trees which are inherently dangerous themselves. And one of the things that is pointed out in in Chainsaws, a History that this book by Lee Um is that again well into the twentieth century, most log working out in the woods at least was done by these human powered tools the acts the hand saw, the crosscut saw, or the misery whip, and these tools could basically get

every job done. It wasn't like there were uber trees that could not be cut down by conventional hand powered technology, and you know, you couldn't cut them down and cut them up until you had a chainsaw. But but the issue is that it's this absolutely grueling physical labor that took time and was hard on the bodies of workers. So obviously, once the industrial revolution comes around, there would be people turning their minds to the question of is there any way to make the job of felling and

bucking trees faster or easier? And it turns out that even though there were no modern chainsaws and exactly the form we think of for felling in bucking wood until the twentieth century, there were some very weird and interesting inventions in the eighteen hundreds trending in that direction. So, for example, one design that Lee brings up is this kind of giant cog wheel. It looks in the in the illustrations like a big metal collar that fits around

the trunk of a tree. And then inside this metal collar there is a cutting blade that is dragged around the outside of the tree in a circular motion, powered by a hand crank. Um. I couldn't find any pictures online, but there is a picture in the book I was looking at, and uh, it's very Clive Barker. It's like a torture device for wood. What also brings to mind the film Robot Jocks that we talked about on Weird

How Cinema. There's a saw very much like this, excepted like a sci fi variation of it that one of the Giant Max used against the other. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Lee also mentions that there is a U. S. Patent for something called a saw chain in the year eighteen fifty eight, but without any method for powering the rapid movement of the chain, so it didn't really offer any advantage at the time. But then it gets to

something really interesting. So Lee's examples of these these pre chainsaw powered saw ideas included, much to my interest, reference to a passage in the War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. And this would have been published in eighteen seven, so this again long predates the modern chainsaw. And so I looked up the context so I could I could read this whole passage from the War of the World's describing

an industrially powered saw. It goes like this, the narrators describing fleeing from the Martian invasion and uh and he says, we went down the lane by the body of the man in black sodden now from overnight hail, and broke into the woods at the foot of the hill. We pushed through these towards the railway without meeting a soul. The woods across the line were but the scarred and blackened ruins of woods. For the most part the trees had fallen, but a certain proportion still stood, dismal gray

stems with dark brown foliage instead of green. On our side, the fire had done no much more than scorched the nearer trees. It had failed to secure its footing. In one place, the woodman had been at work on Saturday. Trees felled and freshly trimmed lay in a clearing with heaps of sawdust by the sawing machine and its engine. Hard By was a temporary hut deserted. There was not a breath of wind this morning, and everything was strangely still.

Even the birds were hushed. And as we hurried along, Eye and the artilleryman talked in whispers and looked now and again over our shoulders. Once or twice we stopped to listen. So uh, this again makes reference to a sawing machine that would have been used by the woodman who are cutting down the trees. And it's interesting that I think Wells is sort of drawing a contrast of

the two types of technology. Here on one side of the road the forest is just absolutely annihilated by the fires, I believe caused by by something from the Martian invasion. I would assume it was the heat ray or some other kind of damage they've done. But then on the other side there is this this partial clearing made by the human woodman and their sawing machine, which I guess Wells may have seen as one, you know, sort of peak pinnacle technology of humankind at the time, but it

can't compete with the destruction caused by the Martians. And so the question is what is this sawing machine that he makes reference to? Well According to Lee, this is not a sci fi invention of Wells imagination, but very likely a reference to a nineteenth century steam powered saw known as a Ransom r A N s O m E. And it's named after its creator, an English inventor named a Ransom Uh and it abuted in the year eighteen sixty.

And so it's it goes something like this. You would have a central wood fired steam boiler, and then from the steam boiler you would have pressure hoses leading out to the saws. So you know, the steam powers the pressure in the hose, and then each saw would have a single cylinder motor, and the piston in this cylinder would power a reciprocating saw blade and so that's important to note that this is not like a chainsaw with

a chain continuously going around in one direction. It's a reciprocating saw blade like you would use with like a hand saws. It's moving back and forth with a solid blade surface. Better than hand sawing, I'm sure, or at least easier. But the ransom was used for logging in Europe and in Africa around around the turn of the

twentieth century. But Lee notes that even if you take away the central boiler which is necessary for it to work, and all the hoses and all the possible accessories, just the saw, just each saw, all on its own, connected to the central boiler, would weigh six hundred pounds or two hundred seventy and the the central boiler supplying the

steam power was also gigantic. It had to be transported on a horse drawn platform, and of course the boiler required water and fuel, which you probably needed to source on site. So you can imagine how much more difficult this is than the the you know, light portable handheld chainsaws of today. This, this is this is a whole apparatus, but I do love the vision of it. I mean,

this is like something out of a steampunk nightmare. Yeah, I mean, in a way, this reminds me of some of the design challenges and some of the reasons that we ended up getting the armored tank, you know, because it's one thing to have the gun. Uh, it's one thing to have the saw, But then how are you going to get it where you need to use it? How you know, how are you going to transport it

across difficult terrain? And so I mean in in the case of the gun, well, if you're talking about a large piece of artillery, you do generally have no other choice but to figure out how to how to build up the machinery around it, how to to make it mobile, figure out what sort of wheels or tracks are necessary.

But with the chainsaw, if I mean with the powered saw anyway, Um, if you could make it smaller and you know, and and still work, if you could, you could, you could you could somehow m reduce the need for for some sort of animal power or or some sort of extravagant machine power being necessary to move it. Uh, then that would solve so many of your problems. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think this is a problem

that's much bigger than just the chainsaw. The chainsaw is one example of the many different kinds of technology that would be revolutionized by power sources and motors and engines becoming smaller and more portable, especially in the early twentieth century as as we had better like electric motors, and then later in the twentieth century as the as the size and format of internal combustion engines got got smaller and more manageable, especially like into the nineteen forties and

so thank But there's another thing that's important here, which is that Lee mentions that these powered saw inventions of the time are pretty much all still rooted in thinking about sawing in the reciprocating format, that is sawing with back and forth motion, which again, if you think about it for a second, modern chainsaws don't do that. They diverge from the back and forth reciprocating motion. Chainsaws apply the removal surface drag in one continuous direction rather than

going back and forth. And there are some advantages to that that I'll get into in just a minute. But given the the importance of the misery whip, and it makes sense right to imagine, well, if if we could mechanize this, what would we do yes, could we take the misery whip and create a machine? They uses it for us. Yeah, And this is something that seems to be the case throughout a lot of the early years

of development of power saws. Is they're just taking the idea of a hand powered saw and then saying can we make this electrically powered or say gasoline powered or something in and but without changing anything about the blade or how it works, just changing how the power or force is applied. And actually it will be changes in on on both sides that give us the ultimate modern chainsaw.

So really, when you think about it, the modern chainsaw involves two important technological components that would make it different than what came before. One of them is the small scale, portable power source and motor, and the other one is the one directional cutting chain. Um. So what are some of the early examples trending in these two directions? Well, le lists a few more things that I thought were interesting, um,

including one thing that sounds like a total terror. But so, first of all, he mentions that in eight there was an inventor in Oregon who got patent for something called a quote sawing chain and frame, but there's no evidence it was ever produced, so this could be one of those sort of uh, non viable prototypes of something that

would later work. And then in nineteen o five there's a business called the Ashland Iron Works, also in Oregon that manufactured an early pneumatic chainsaw, but apparently this saw

very little pick up in the market. Uh. The same year, in nineteen o five, a gasoline powered chainsaw was demonstrated in Eureka, California, and Lee describes it as follows, quote driven by a two cylinder water cooled engine, the machine drew its fuel and water supply from tanks that were nailed to the tree trunk above it and quote removed when the tree was about to go over. Oh my god. That's yeah, that's without even having all the details about

humans interacted with it. With this thing that sounds devastatingly dangerous. You could that be the basis of a horror movie. I don't know. Your killer would be very immobile, just like, come over, come over to this tree. But there's another thing that's interesting about this one that makes it very different than the chainsaws of today. In this model, the chain did not rotate around a fixed bar or blade.

So when you picture a modern chainsaw. You know, there's the chain and then there's that flat metal thing that the chain goes around. Generally that's referred to as the bar, so that you know, the bar doesn't move, but the chain circles around the outside of the bar. This this chainsaw did not have a bar. It just had a chain, and the motor would power a chain that rotated freely

around the trunk of the tree. So this would be kind of like a gas powered garrotte wire for a tree with with part of the machine itself nailed to the tree above where you were cutting. Now, that is very in keeping with the the device we see in robot jocks. Yes, but allegedly this thing could cut through a trunk of about ten feet in diameter in in

four and a half minutes. Now. The book also mentions an issue of Scientific American that had a cover photo boasting a giant chainsaw bucking a huge fallen redwood, and I found it from the issue from January twenty second, nineteen ten. The caption is cutting a redwood tree with a saw driven by an engine. So in a way, this is a lot like a chainsaw because this model does actually have a central bar with a cutting chain that rotates around it, and the chain is powered by

a motor. But it is not like modern chainsaws in that it is not a handheld tool. This is a massive appliance that's operated by an engine mounted on some kind of platform that looks like it's on tracks. And yet in this, uh, this image, you can still see why this would be a great invention to have, Like this is an enormous tree trunk, and I can I can easily imagine how this would have saved them time.

And so, you know, they're cutting a redwood, which of course again is a gigantic trunk, and they're using it for bucking on a on a red wood that has already been knocked down, so it's lying flat on the ground and this machine is going alongside it bucking out the logs of of whatever length they're going to end up using. Apparently was developed by a California based inventor named R. L. Muir, and it was called the Endless

cross cut saw. Wow, this sounds very poetic. The endless saw. Yeah, it saws forever, the infinite saw that it kind of sums up perhaps the you know, the national view of our forest at that time, this was, you know, an

endless saw for an endless supply of of wood. So there's also a segment in Lee's book that I thought was very good because it addresses the question of why a chain, you know, like why even bother with a chainsaw as opposed to the more classic reciprocating saw, because there were all these models where you could take an engine and apply some kind of mechanical power or to a classic style back and forth reciprocating saw blade. Um,

what what actually makes a chain that much better? Well, apparently unidirectional motion of the cutting surface is better for multiple reasons. First of all, stopping saw motion to reverse direction, which you have to do every single pass with a reciprocating saw. That makes it harder to build up speed on the motion of the saw. And it's also a huge waste of energy, so every time you accelerate the cutting edge, you then immediately have to waste energy slowing

it down again and stopping it before you reverse. But Lee points out something else that I wouldn't have thought about, which is the reciprocating motion also creates vibration, which makes it more difficult to guide cuts accurately. Um. And so when I was reading this, I immediately started wondering about something about Okay, wait a minute, though, you could have continuous one directional sawing motion without having a reciprocating saw by using a circular saw, right, you know, like somebody

would have in their wood shop. That's one directional cutting that would solve some of these problems. Right, And of course we we've seen plenty of images of this and like industrialized you know, um lumber processing facilities where they'll be that one big vertical saw that they're sending logs down. And of course, if you're watching some sort of a horror suspense show, inevitably a human being is going to

be sent down there to be cut in half as well. Right, Yeah, the joker is going to tie up Batman and put him on the road down to the big circular saw.

But of course, while a circular saw is great in a in a sort of workshop or saw mill environment where like you have fixed sawing infrastructure and you know the size of the things you're going to have to cut, you can imagine that you might start to encounter problems using a giant circular saw to say, cut trees down in the field, because when you think about a circular saw, the maximum depth of a cut made by a circular saw is going to be the radius of the saw blade,

or about the radius of the saw blade, right, because it has to be mounted from the middle. So if you want to cut through a tree trunk that's ten ft wide, you need a saw that can cut in at least about five feet. Uh So you need like a tin foot wide circular saw blade, which it sounds very cool but not practical. Uh Though despite that impracticality, circular saws for logging actually did exist in the early

days of power sawing. Uh So there's an image of one of these again in Lee's book called the Holt Stump Saw. It's one of those images you you it's amazing, but you kind of wish you could unsee it. Uh It looks like an absolute slaughter wagon. So there's like a tractor basically with tracks, and then mounted on the tractor is this giant metal arm with a steering wheel at one end and a guy wearing a fedora holding

the steering wheel. And then at the other end of this poll leading out from the wheel is a humongous circular saw that's just open to the air. Yeah, this is uh, this is this is very terrifying looking. It also reminds me of the various uh sawm mechanisms and

vehicles that are in the Lorax, uh, the Illustrated book. Because, of course, the well you eventually get with the Lorax is that the one sler in his corporation are just cutting down all the truffle of trees they can, and they have these machines to aid them, and they look like you know, basically fever dreams based on this concept, big circular blades attached to weird arms and whatnot. Oh I wonder if the idea comes from seeing one of these actual machines, like the whole stump saw. Yeah, it

could be. Well allegedly, I mean, so these things did exist, even though they have their problems. Apparently, giant circular saws for logging were made in Russia and in France, but again they were huge, unwieldy, they had problems, and so chain saws, of course, they offered the best of both worlds. So the rotating chain allows you to have the speed and energy efficiency and accurate cut guiding of a circular saw,

but with the convenient long shape of the reciprocating saw. Alright, Well, on that note, we we're reaching the end of this episode, so we're gonna go ahead and uh, we're gonna go and cut it off right here. Uh, but we're gonna get back, yeah, clean cut. We have we have so much to cover in the next episode. We're going to talk about the the invention of the chainsaw, really the most important chainsaws and chainsaw history. We're gonna talk about

medical chainsaws. Uh. And we're gonna talk a little bit about what the chainsaw symbolizes in um in American culture. Uh so, and I'm sure we'll we'll also continue to to discuss a few horror movies along the way. I can't wait. In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find them in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. You can get that wherever you get

your podcast. Uh. Normally we have of a core episode on Tuesday and Thursday, Artifact on Wednesday, Listener Mail on Monday, Weird House Cinema on Friday. That's, of course, are our weird movie episode that kind of bucks the tradition of science and culture that we uh we we stick to for the rest of the episodes. However, the week that you're listening to this show, we may be altering that a little bit just to get out content before Halloween. It wouldn't be Halloween if we didn't throw a few

surprises your way. Um so so, as always huge thanks to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your

favorite shows. Then it doesn't Matt four four four f