Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin Elephant", that every magician of the 20th century was "haunted" by Robert-Houdin, "…who cast an enormous shadow over their generation." American magician and escape artist Harry Houdini (born Ehrich Weiss) was so impressed by Robert-Houdin that, after reading his autobiography in 1890, Ehrich adopted the stage name of "Houdini" in honour of Robert-Houdin. He incorrectly believed that an "i" on the end of a name meant "like" in French; but Houdini, his own career and reputation established by that time, later lost his youthful respect for Robert-Houdin, believing that he took undue credit for other magicians' innovations, and wrote "The
Jan Weiss Jan Weiss Jan Weiss (10 May 1892 – 7 March 1972) was a Czech author, best known for his surrealist novel "House of a Thousand Floors" (). Jan Weiss was born on 10 May 1892, at Valdštejnská 68 in the town of Jilemnice, the son of Josef Weiss (known locally as "Monarch") and Filoména Richter. His mother died in 1897 when he was five years old, and his father remarried a German woman and had another three children. As an adolescent, Weiss and his cousin were known as local troublemakers. In 1913, he finished his secondary education at a Gymnasium