What have you reinvented?

[Andru Luvisi]

It seems awfully easy to reinvent something that already exists. I know I've done it more times than I care to remember. I recall being so pleased with myself when I came up with the idea of unhooking my left forefinger from around the outter left corner of the deck in the Erdnase bottom deal, only to discover later that not only had this idea been published in Expert Card Technique, it was pretty much the only way anybody did the Erdnase bottom deal these days...

I'm curious. What tricks or moves have you all "invented", only to discover later they already existed?

Andru
http://www.practicenotincluded.com/

[Ian Kendall]

From the top of my head, 90% of Elmsley's Four Card trick, Vernon wand spin and loading a card under a jacket from a weird Kelly-Ovette type grip.

Oh well.

Ian

[Guest]

Bill Kalush's Cut. I called it Layout until David Acer saw it and said, "Ah, the Kalush Cut."

It seemed awfully likely to have already existed. So I took it and ran creating a bunch of crazy zany flying packet endings for sharing with magicians.

Not magic but juggling.

Tom Cutts
AM/PM

[Bob Farmer]

I reinvented practically move for move, and effect for effect, Marlo's FLIGHT FOR 3 (Kabbala 1, p. 78. Marlo returned the favor when he published a coin idea of mine in Apocalypse, a couple of months after my idea had appaered (eve used the same illustrations).

I think you have to make a distinction between an inventing something and simply being the first person to state the obvious.

[Pete McCabe]

A few years ago I invented a fantastic impromptu, no-gaff version of Brainwave.

If you like, you can read the description under "Brainweave" in The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley.

[Pete Biro]

Orben line: Here's a trick I saw a few times before I invented it.

My line: "I have a creative memory"

OK, mini quiz... who was the first to utter, "Hold out your hand, No... the clean one. Oh, that was the clean one."

I really know the answer, oome back tomorrow.

In a chat with Dai Vernon about "stock lines" we kicked that line around and I came up with...

"Hold out your hand... hmmmmm... did you have a flat tire on the way here?"

I have a (I believe) fairly original acquitment with the cups and balls... and I got a note from Ettiene Laruencue (SP?) who is writing a book on cups and balls moves. He said, "Argh... I invented a move and now I see it is already in your lecture notes!"

The move? With a ball under a Pawl Foxx type cup, and you want to show the cup has no ball under it... hold your hand flat, parallel to the tabletop and strike the cup, ala Karate chop, so the cup rolls over away from you. As it rolls over, your thumb kicks the ball inside the cup toward its top... in a continuous motion the hand grabs the cup by the now mouth up rim and lifts it showing no ball on the table.

It is nice to do this with two cups at the same time, one actually is empty. :D

[David Acer]

I put a move on Roadkillers called The Sliding Double Lift, only to learn that Paul Curry created the same technique. The man was clearly a genius.

[Richard Kaufman]

I developed this great visual simultaneous two-card change in the 1970s and published it as "The Radical Change."
Oh well.
Marlo had already published it as "Face-Up Startler." What a bummer!

[Guest]

I was quite upset when I saw the sliding double lift on Roadkillers. I thought I had invented it.

Nice to know I am not the only one.

I have been performing the old "take your picture with a phone booth trick" for years. ;)

[Guest]

Speaking of reinventing...

Has anyone invented this?

Perform a houdini colour change (I can't spell erdanaise) but instead of sliding the second card onto the top you palm it off. This can be done in a squaring action.

You can use it by doing the tilt move with a face up card and then stealing it out. Or use it to palm out those tricky double back gaffs like blink and hollow etc.

I am a genius or what.

Probably what.

:(

[Richard Kaufman]

Yes, Nicholas, it has been done.
It's spelled "Erdnase."
Houdini's name begins with a capital "H."
Good typing is the key to clean living! :)

[Guest]

I speil feine thenk yo.

:p

[David Acer]

Originally posted by Nicholas J. Johnson:
I was quite upset when I saw the sliding double lift on Roadkillers. I thought I had invented it.

I hear you brother. Maybe we should form a support group for people who have reinvented Paul Curry moves.

[Guest]

I've used the Kaps Subtlety before learning that it was attributed to Kaps. With all due reverence to both Kaps and Ramsay, I have a hard time imagining that their namesake subtleties are not centuries old.

[Guest]

Same here. I was using the Kaps Subtlety for years, never even thinking of it as a sleight or as something meriting a name or a description, before I read about it in Roth's book. It just seemed the obvious way to display my hand empty.

Dave

[John LeBlanc]

Originally posted by Pete Biro:
OK, mini quiz... who was the first to utter, "Hold out your hand, No... the clean one. Oh, that was the clean one."

I really know the answer, oome back tomorrow.

I believe that was Walter Blaney. And, if memory serves, it wasn't meant as a joke.

John LeBlanc
Houston, TX

[Mike Powers]

Hi Richard,

I never thought of "The Radical Change" as the same as "Face Up Startler." FUS appears in Marlo Magazine 2 and is used to change one card into another. Bill Malone does it better than anyone else I've seen do FUS.

In FUS a double card is sort of "wiped" against the deck as the face card is unloaded in a KM type action which leaves the hidden card in view. The face card of the double should not really ever be out of view. When Malone does it you can really see most of the face just before the card is snapped back onto the deck. It can look really magical.

I applied it to a change of a normal card to a miniature. It's actually much easier to do with a mini card and really looks great.

"The Radical Change" can have a similar appearance to FUS because of the KM type action. But RC visually changes the faces of TWO cards at the same time. It's an excellent move that you don't see done very often.

BTW another great move from "Cardmagic" is the "Semi Circular Switch." This will fool the pants off magicians when executed well.

Mike

[Pete Biro]

It was Walter Zaney Blaney that first said "Hold out your hand... no the clean one."

Stay tooned. :eek:

[Jon Racherbaumer]

If you "buy" the notion of Platonic Forms or that ANY idea or concept exists a priori and can only be DISCOVERED or REINVENTED (as we magicians are wont to dub it), then why do we fuss and fume about having RIGHTS to having discovered, invented,devised, reinvented, or otherwise created something? We all seem a bit too pleased with ourselves and our ingenuity to simply let it pass unnoticed or unheralded. We want credit (sometimes desperately so) and we want praise and not-so-simple acknowledgement for our INDEPENDENT efforts.

Since there are a finite number of physical ways (although that number may be huge) to do anything in magic, reinvention is inevitable.

However, I tend to celebrate not only this redundant process, but I find it a perpetual source of amusement AND bemusement.

Onward...

[Richard Kaufman]

The so-called Kaps Subtlety should actually have been attributed to Malini. It is in Vernon's book on Malini, and it was pointed out by Jamy Swiss. Unfortunately, when you have thousands of copies of a book out there, it's almost impossible to get these things straight once they're screwed up.

[Pete McCabe]

The crediting issue regarding the Kaps-Malini Subtlety has always baffled me.

From The Discoverie of Witchcraft:
"He that hath once atteined to the facilitie of retiening one piece of monie in his right hand, may show a hundreth pleasant conceipts by that meanes..."

Palming coins was a common technique in 1584. Did it really take 300 more years before someone figured out that if you hold something in the palming hand it makes the hand appear more empty?

Clearly there is value in having a name for such a subtlety, so that we can refer to it more efficiently. And clearly there is also a value in honoring the great work of Kaps and Malini.

But does anyone really think either of these great magicians invented the subtlety whose credit they share? Or does it bear their name simply because they used it most famously?

By the way, a bunch of years ago I invented David Acer. I showed him to Mr. and Mrs. Acer, and nine months later, low and behold, they "announced" their own version. Coincidence? You decide.

[John LeBlanc]

Originally posted by Pete McCabe:

But does anyone really think either of these great magicians invented the subtlety whose credit they share? Or does it bear their name simply because they used it most famously?

I'm wondering if sometimes it wouldn't be better to use the term "discovered" rather than "invented".

John LeBlanc
Houston, TX

[Guest]

In the case of the Kaps/Malini and (perhaps even more so) the Ramsay subtleties, it's just impossible to imagine that magicians haven't used these dodges for eons. Maybe, as Pete McCabe suggests, the labels are still useful as a matter of shorthand. It certainly takes fewer words to say, "Hold the coin in Ramsay Subtlety" than, "Let the audience see the empty palm of the hand with the finger-palmed coin." But I think it's more the case that these are instances of magicians being excessively enamored both of (unnecessary) attribution and of secretive, members-only jargon.

And again, by saying this, I don't believe I'm taking anything away from Ramsay, Kaps, or Malini. With everything else they had to their credit, I doubt they laid strong claim to these nuances.

By the way, I now declare that the accidental flashing of a fingerpalmed coin shall henceforth and forever be known as the Bonheim Blatancy.

[Guest]

In the Sixties, I rediscovered the Ascanio Spread which I was not familiar with at that time. I showed it to Neil Foster, and he had no idea what it was either. So, I wrote it up, had an artist draw some illustrations, and Neil published it in the New Tops. Within a week of the magazine being released Neil and I heard from a dozen or so magicians pointing out the true originator.

[Pete Biro]

Being close to Kaps at the time, I really think that "others" named it the Kaps Subtlety.

What happened was this: He came up with a routine where a silver in one hand changed to copper, while a copper in the other changed to silver.

This was done "in sessions" and usually with Fred on the floor, kneeling (so the viewers were really looking DOWN on his hands.

The hands never came close, he just turned them palm down and when he turned them back palm up the coins changed.

The KICKER was, he would say, "You think I use more than one coin in each hand? Yes... Look..."

And he would turn the hands back palm up and he would have TWO CHINESE COINS.

Fred had HUGE Mitts... I used to say, "You have a finger left over when you palm cards."

When he first showed this he literally FLOORED all the coin guys... the effect was new to them and they had no idea.

When he did tip, I think many just coined "Kaps Subtlety" as they probably never saw anyone else use the same grip.

It had roots in dice switching.

:genii:

[Guest]

Funny that the subtlety has been named for two guys notorious for tiny and huge hands, respectively.

[Pete Biro]

One used large coins the other small coins? :confused:

[Jon Racherbaumer]

Ah, distinctions, distinctions!
In my own private notes of Strictly Personal Prejudices, I made these observations:

The notion of concealing a coin in a hand while simultaneously revealing parts of the hand--the full palm or sides of the palm--to be ostensibly "empty" has been done purposefully or intuitively or accidentally since Day One.

During the last century it became a planned, strategic, and NAMED ACQUITMENT where the performer under the guise of another, logical action (that was an important part of the overall choreography)hid a coin while STRONGLY SUGGESTING that the palming hand is empty. It was a subliminal, rehearsed thing.

Malini and Ramsay used a natural finger-palm most of the time. Kaps preferred a Classic Palm in regards to applying this subtlety. (I don't KNOW this for a fact; however, their work suggests this...)

None of these gentleman claimed or named the concept. Other magicians, looking for a useful cognomen, named them for those they saw frequently using the Subtlety.

So...
...if you use a finger-palm and flash the rest of your palm, you are using a MALINI or RAMSAY SUBTLETY. If you are Classic Palming and part of the palm is visible, you are using the KAPS SUBTLETY.
Fair enough?

However, when I'm practicing alone in my padded cell, I don't call these approaches ANYTHING.

I just sit there and grin...

like a loon...

...muttering something about "ugly angles."

Onward...