Windham finds spark in collecting plugs

Published 2:31 am Tuesday, April 22, 2008

If man had failed to invent a replaceable screw-in device to ignite an internal combustion engine, automotive technology may have evolved somewhat differently … and Pendleton resident Chad Windham would be out of a life-long hobby.

More than a mere collector of spark plugs, Windham and his wife, Carla, are curators of what he assures is the largest spark plug museum in the world – as fascinating and meticulously designed, perhaps, as any professional hall-of-fame display.

“As the internal combustion engine was being developed, spark plugs were one of their problem areas because they couldn’t make them fire fast enough,” Windham said. “That brought a lot of ingenuity worldwide on how to make a better spark plug.”

That ingenuity manifested itself in about a century’s worth of slight modifications to the cylindrical plugs, including early “primer” plugs the user would fill up with a bit of gasoline. Windham also demonstrated a two-ended plug a car driver could flip over if one side “fouled up.”

In addition to owning about 3,000 brands of plugs – many arranged in glass displays – Windham’s private exhibit also showcases the amusing history of spark plug advertisement. Every spare wall and ceiling space displays an extensive collection of posters and promotional gear.

“Used to (be) plugs were a major hassle,” Windham said. “Even in the ’50s and ’60s, people were changing eight spark plugs every 10,000 miles.”

As such, the various spark plug manufacturers implemented a host of advertising gimmicks to attract customers. Sex appeal was no exception.

“Even the movie stars got into advertising for spark plugs,” Carla said, pointing out cardboard cutout displays featuring Rita Hayworth and Joan Blondell in skimpy attire.

Not to be outdone, however, Windham showed one French-made spark plug with an image of two “ladies of the night” blasted onto the ceramic insulator.

Nevertheless, the ultimate advertising battle was waged between competing Champion Ignition Co. and AC Spark Plug Co. – both named after French spark plug designer Albert Champion. One of AC’s advertisements had a mouse trap with a Champion spark plug caught in the metal clamp, the caption below reading, “This dirty rat was caught stealing gas!”

In 1999, Windham’s guru-like knowledge of spark plugs entered a strange, quasi-archaeological debate over an item known as the Coso Artifact. Supposedly picked up from a dried California lake bed in the early 1960s, the Coso Artifact was a rock containing a small device that looked like a spark plug of unknown design. As one geologist had said the rock was a geode – close to 500,000 years old – various fanatics began pointing to the object as evidence of an ancient, advanced civilization.

Windham received a letter from a man named Pierre Stromberg, asking him to identify what was in the artifact’s X-ray images.

“I thought it was some kind of hoax,” Windham said of the letter. “I could see from the X-ray picture it was nothing but a Champion spark plug made in the ’20s.”

Stromberg used Windham’s testimony in an official research paper published to debunk the long-standing myth.

“I’ve been accused of being in a religious cult because of that,” Windham said. “There’s some people with not much to do with their life.”

Windham began collecting as a teenager and continues to gather items from around the world.