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Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 28th, 2018, 3:02 pm
by Bill Mullins
lybrary wrote:
Bill Mullins wrote:I see.
If they were the same, do you have any thoughts as to a volume which had been submitted for copyright on Jan 4 1923 was resubmitted for copyright on Jan 8 1924?
I am assuming the change in title from Printing Estimating to Printing Practice made them resubmit it.


Doesn't seem likely, since titles aren't copyrightable.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 28th, 2018, 3:02 pm
by Leonard Hevia
Bob Coyne wrote:I have a new version of my Erdnase-Sanders linguistic correspondences online.

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~coyne/erdnase-sanders-use-of-language.html

Several changes since I last posted it:

1) An introduction providing context and the overall evidence for Sanders and how the language fits into it.
2) More annotations: All Erdnase excerpts include page numbers. Excerpts from Sanders' class reunion writing mention when from bios or poems.
3) Includes some nice new examples, including those from a couple new sources
4) Converted to HTML (w/ convenient intra-document hyperlinks)
5) Includes some raw data in the form of tables of word counts of many "thematic" words.
6) Addendum with Sanders full 1906 mining letter mapped to a dozen corresponding Erdnase excerpts.
7) A section of highights, containing a dozen of the most salient and interesting correspondences collected in one place (pulled from the larger set of examples).
8) two new findings: on Sanders' mention of anagrams and use of syllabic shuffling (as in the "ruse and" <=> "andrews" in the book's subtitle)


Anyone who doubts S.W. Erdnase was W.E. Sanders needs to read Bob's PDF. And Bob isn't asking anyone to PayPal him $45.00 for the information.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 28th, 2018, 6:18 pm
by Zenner
Leonard Hevia wrote: A name reversal is a simple anagram. And yet he purchased six decks of playing cards in one transaction. Laymen don't purchase six decks of cards in one transaction.


People who play cards might well - especially if they are going away on a trip. No computers, no TVs. There is no evidence that Sanders knew ANYTHING about sleight of hand with cards, never mind writing an encyclopedia on the subject.

Leonard Hevia wrote: An association with McKinney isn't a requirement. The author could have stepped in as an outsider to publish the book. Bob already pointed out earlier in this thread that Demarest discovered a possible Dalrymple ancestry in the Sanders family lineage.


An association with McKinney's business is a necessity. Keep up Leonard! "Could have" and "possible" don't count as evidence.

Leonard Hevia wrote:Sharpen your sword Zenner.


I don't need to Leonard. Evidence is either there or it's not. I shall leave the name calling to to those who shout the loudest.

Carry on quibbling!

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 28th, 2018, 6:44 pm
by Leonard Hevia
Zenner wrote:People who play cards might well - especially if they are going away on a trip. No computers, no TVs. There is no evidence that Sanders knew ANYTHING about sleight of hand with cards, never mind writing an encyclopedia on the subject.


People back then purchased six decks in one transaction? Sanders knew about magic with playing cards. He wrote it in his notebook. That there is no evidence to date of sleight of hand abilities means that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. As far as absence goes, there is a whopping absence of writing evidence that matches Erdnase's style for your candidate.

Zenner wrote:An association with McKinney's business is a necessity.


And what is the necessity of the association with McKinney? Are you saying that it was just not possible for an outsider to walk in and get his book published? Didn't McKinney accept customers?

Leonard Hevia wrote:Sharpen your sword Zenner.


Zenner wrote:I don't need to Leonard.


You do need to sharpen your sword. There is possible evidence for a Dalrymple connection for Sanders that you claimed was not there. If you had read the last several pages of this thread you would have encountered that. Like that insufferable Keyes chap, you post here without doing much reading beforehand. I understand, reading is work.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 28th, 2018, 7:51 pm
by Bill Mullins
lybrary wrote:
Bill Mullins wrote:. . . except on p 91, the first two paragraphs of which are copied from p. 311 of Handbook of quality-standard papers, without attribution or quotation marks. Other sentences from this page in Estimating are also copied from the same source. For example, the last paragraph of Estimating, p. 91 is taken from the section "Broken Packages" of Handbook, p. 315.
Copying a bullet point like "The Basic Size shall be 25x38 inches." can hardly be called plagiarism. Also copying a sentence like "The minimum basic weight for machine-finished paper shall be 45 pounds, for supercalendered paper 50 pounds, and for paper coated on one side 60 pounds, and on two sides 70 pounds." is hardly a case that requires quotation marks. . . . This can hardly be compared with pulling paragraphs from a book from another author.

Chris underestimates how much Gallaway lifted. The highlighted material below came directly from the Handbook.

Image

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 28th, 2018, 8:33 pm
by lybrary
These are all trade customs, as the title clearly states, which were meant to be copied without attribution. That's what they were made for. As I have shown, several other authors copied them, too. The organizations who drafted them asked for copying and distribution. You need to find relevant examples, which means something other than trade customs.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 28th, 2018, 11:26 pm
by Bill Mullins
I would point out that most of the places in which you find these trade customs, they are in fact attributed to the various trade organizations that standardized them. So your statement "meant to be copied without attribution" is wrong.

But again, as I've said before, and as you continually avoid, so what? The point is not that Gallaway had some implied permission to reproduce the material, with or without attribution. The point is that Gallaway does copy the work of others without attribution, and has done so more than once, from more than one source. So you can't be sure that anything in his books or writings is original with him. You explicitly do assume that the instances you had found of other unattributed copying means that the pre-existing work must also be by Gallaway (an assumption which was already dubious), but these new examples of unattributed copying show that you can't make that assumption at all. You use that assumption in a logic chain that ends in the statements that Gallaway played cards, Gallaway is pictured in Copyfitting and in the Monotype Journal, etc., etc. Even if all the other links in the chain were rock-solid (and it looks to me like no one except yourself thinks they are), this unattributed copying breaks the chain, and your conclusions are invalid.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 29th, 2018, 9:02 am
by jkeyes1000
Bill Mullins wrote:I would point out that most of the places in which you find these trade customs, they are in fact attributed to the various trade organizations that standardized them. So your statement "meant to be copied without attribution" is wrong.

But again, as I've said before, and as you continually avoid, so what? The point is not that Gallaway had some implied permission to reproduce the material, with or without attribution. The point is that Gallaway does copy the work of others without attribution, and has done so more than once, from more than one source. So you can't be sure that anything in his books or writings is original with him. You explicitly do assume that the instances you had found of other unattributed copying means that the pre-existing work must also be by Gallaway (an assumption which was already dubious), but these new examples of unattributed copying show that you can't make that assumption at all. You use that assumption in a logic chain that ends in the statements that Gallaway played cards, Gallaway is pictured in Copyfitting and in the Monotype Journal, etc., etc. Even if all the other links in the chain were rock-solid (and it looks to me like no one except yourself thinks they are), this unattributed copying breaks the chain, and your conclusions are invalid.


Your logic is somewhat ambitious, Bill. The trade customs were indeed intended to be copied, with or without attribution. Some publications may have mentioned the source when citing it, but this was not a requirement.

And you can't seriously cast doubt on Gallaway's tendency to credit other authors, using only trade customs as examples. All this proves is that he didn't believe it was necessary in regard to industry standards and practices--which can hardly be considered "literature" of the sort that we find in the idiosyncratic writings of Gallaway, Sanders, and Erdnase.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 29th, 2018, 10:17 am
by lybrary
Bill Mullins wrote:You explicitly do assume that the instances you had found of other unattributed copying means that the pre-existing work must also be by Gallaway (an assumption which was already dubious), but these new examples of unattributed copying show that you can't make that assumption at all.
You are approaching this from the wrong angle. This is not how I argue. The unattributed re-use of material in "Copyfitting" by Gallaway is probable cause to investigate the authorship of "Copyfitting" and of "The Monotype System". The linguistic fingerprint and the photographic evidence is proof that it is indeed Gallaway. Look at this facial comparison I have just completed:

Image

The above facial comparison has an unknown person on the left, which functions as control, a close-up of the head in profile from "The Monotype System" in the middle, and a known Gallaway portrait on the right.

The portrait on the right has him slightly look up. I rotated the profiles so that the faces are also pointing slightly upwards. I then drew red horizontal lines to mark certain features on Gallaway’s face, such as eyes, nose tip, mouth, top of head and bottom of chin. As we can see all the features from the center profile line up with Gallaway’s portrait. However, the control image of a random person on the left side does not line up at all, proving that the profile in the center depicts very likely Gallaway.

The only discrepancy is the size of the right ear, which appears smaller in the portrait and larger in the profile. But we should expect this due to perspective. In the profile the ear is closest to the camera and will therefore appear slightly larger. In the frontal portrait the ears are somewhat further away from the camera than the face, and thus in this photo the ears will appear slightly smaller. The combined effect is that the ear size in this comparison is not an exact match, as we expect due to perspective distortions. With all these facial features lining up perfectly we have a match of the face, at least as much as one could expect from such a comparison. Also remember the bald spot in the profile which has grown larger in the portrait from about a decade later. And both photos show a man with a light complexion. The profile in the center shows light colored hair, the portrait on the right light colored eyes.

We can conclude that Gallaway wrote "The Monotype System" and "Copyfitting". Linguistic fingerprint and photo evidence proof if. The fact that Gallaway re-uses material from these books without attribution was the probable cause that lead me to this discovery and adds to the case, but is not the sole linchpin on which it rests.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 29th, 2018, 10:54 am
by Leonard Hevia
lybrary wrote:The fact that Gallaway re-uses material from these books without attribution was the probable cause that lead me to this discovery and adds to the case, but is not the sole linchpin on which it rests.


Adds to what case? All that stuff happened in the 1920s, way after The Expert. The fact that Gallaway copies without attribution further convinces me that he lifted parts of The Expert in his writing and book publishing.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 29th, 2018, 10:59 am
by lybrary
Leonard Hevia wrote:
lybrary wrote:The fact that Gallaway re-uses material from these books without attribution was the probable cause that lead me to this discovery and adds to the case, but is not the sole linchpin on which it rests.


Adds to what case? All that stuff happened in the 1920s, way after The Expert. The fact that Gallaway copies without attribution further convinces me that he lifted parts of The Expert in his writing and book publishing.
We are discussing here the authorship of "The Monotype System" (1912 & 1916) and "Copyfitting" (1916) books.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 29th, 2018, 12:47 pm
by Roger M.
Not directly related to Erdnase, but rather an interesting look at the early Chicago printing scene, and the original Chicago printers row ... with Drake, McKinney, etc all within a few blocks of each other.
Interesting aside, that Chicago has a "new" printers row, largely due to real estate prices in the "old" printers row today being some of the most expensive downtown Chicago properties:

https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/4/9/171 ... al-artists

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 29th, 2018, 6:42 pm
by Jack Shalom
Chris, I have to say, I thought you were going to have more with the facial recognition contention; but for me those photos and diagrams are not convincing evidence at all.

The people in the photos don't look alike, and even then, your proportion argument doesn't pan out.

I think your have some strong arguments for Gallaway, but this, and the hand size to height estimation, are fraught with possibilities of error from many sources.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 12:05 am
by Leonard Hevia
After reading Bob's updated analyses of the writing similarities between Sanders and Erdnase, I can't possibly accept that he was not the author of The Expert. There is such a vast array of similarities in the writing that to adamantly believe Sanders is not a viable candidate is to be in denial. When you throw in all the other pieces of circumstantial evidence that point to Sanders, the mystery whittles down to the search for a final confirmation.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 1:34 am
by Bob Coyne
Leonard Hevia wrote:After reading Bob's updated analyses of the writing similarities between Sanders and Erdnase, I can't possibly accept that he was not the author of The Expert. There is such a vast array of similarities in the writing that to adamantly believe Sanders is not a viable candidate is to be in denial. When you throw in all the other pieces of circumstantial evidence that point to Sanders, the mystery whittles down to the search for a final confirmation.

I obviously agree :-)

I think if W.E. Sander's name was E.S. Andrews, then it would be regarded as a pretty much open and shut case. However, I think some people resist abandoning the simplicity and directness of the backwards spelling explanation. But, if you think about it, the double anagram using the backwards spelling as misdirection to hide internal anagram is much more ingenious. We know Erdnase is someone who appreciated "Machiavellian subtlety," so why would we expect something so simple and unsubtle as a reversed spelling with a meaningless forward spelling that practically demands you to find the reversed name? If that's all we had to go on, then we'd be stuck with it. But it really doesn't fit.

On the other hand, once allowing that the reversed spelling acts as misdirection from the real anagram, we can notice that the pseudonym itself ties into Sanders' life (Erdnase = earth nose = mining engineer). And we can also notice the "Andrews" = "AND RUSE" hints in the subtitle telling us that "Andrews" is a ruse. But the real clincher is when we find out that Sanders loved wordplay generally. And that he played with anagrams and letter combinations on his own name (as well as other people's), and that he even referred figuratively to a name as being a "combination of letters". We really couldn't ask for a more perfect scenario. He's the right person to devise such a clever pseudonym. And his name just so happens to be an anagram of the author's.

Once getting past the misdirection in the anagram, the rest falls into place. With Sanders we have (thanks to Marty Demarest) strong concrete evidence of his involvement in both magic and gambling. And the clincher for me is the writing. I don't think I could find a writer who sounds more like Erdnase than Sanders. The purpose of the document I put together was to identify all the ways that happens -- to make it as concrete and obvious as possible by grouping the correspondences together by type so as to better hear the author's voice. As I say in my conclusion, the correspondences are extensive and range from from lexical-syntactic constructions, to word choice, to ironic flourishes, to rhetorical devices, to shared metaphors, to biographically-related topics, to stylistic quirks (e.g. vernacular speech and parenthetical punctuation), to themantic obsessions, to the use of puns and scare quotes on the exact same words.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 9:28 am
by Zenner
Leonard Hevia wrote:After reading Bob's updated analyses of the writing similarities between Sanders and Erdnase, I can't possibly accept that he was not the author of The Expert. There is such a vast array of similarities in the writing that to adamantly believe Sanders is not a viable candidate is to be in denial. When you throw in all the other pieces of circumstantial evidence that point to Sanders, the mystery whittles down to the search for a final confirmation.


I must be missing something somewhere. Erdnase wrote an encyclopedia of card sleights, etc., added some card tricks, and demonstrated the contents to Marshall D. Smith so that he could illustrate the book.

Where is the evidence that Sanders was capable of all that?

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 10:58 am
by jkeyes1000
Zenner wrote:
Leonard Hevia wrote:After reading Bob's updated analyses of the writing similarities between Sanders and Erdnase, I can't possibly accept that he was not the author of The Expert. There is such a vast array of similarities in the writing that to adamantly believe Sanders is not a viable candidate is to be in denial. When you throw in all the other pieces of circumstantial evidence that point to Sanders, the mystery whittles down to the search for a final confirmation.


I must be missing something somewhere. Erdnase wrote an encyclopedia of card sleights, etc., added some card tricks, and demonstrated the contents to Marshall D. Smith so that he could illustrate the book.

Where is the evidence that Sanders was capable of all that?


Good point! The purchase of six decks of playing cards doesn't in any way support the hypothesis that Sanders could have demonstrated the moves to Smith. And the reference to "Mutus Nomen" is a pitiable fraction of evidence that he had an interest in magic. In those days, magic was far more fascinating to audiences than it is in this cynical age. It was not uncommon for boys to dream of becoming magicians. It was the equivalent of lads wanting to be astronauts and cowboys in our day. Having a momentary thought about it and developing great skill at it are two very different matters.

And as for the "cleverness" of the anagram--all I will say is that this is a great pitfall of logic, to stop when you get to the point that suits you. If Erdnase were just a bit more ingenious, he might have gone so far as to scramble someone else's name.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 11:20 am
by Tom Gilbert
Not sure where your reading comprehension is, but Sanders has more in his corner than any other candidate. Beyond buying cards and writing about a card effect, there is more. These are facts, not diagrams, conjectures. If you are going to discount cards and effects as not being worth mention, what will be?

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 11:44 am
by jkeyes1000
Tom Gilbert wrote:Not sure where your reading comprehension is, but Sanders has more in his corner than any other candidate. Beyond buying cards and writing about a card effect, there is more. These are facts, not diagrams, conjectures. If you are going to discount cards and effects as not being worth mention, what will be?


I am in agreement with Mr. Zenner, that whoever wrote the routines for the magic tricks in EATCT had to be an experienced magician. They strongly suggest not only knowledge of how the tricks are done, but of the all-important presentation. An amateur who never had to earn his living on stage is not likely to have learned the importance of this. If Erdnase is to be considered "an original", an innovator, a creative contributor to the annals of magic rather than a mere parrot, he cannot reasonably be supposed to have intuitively surmised the essential elements of successful performing.

Benedict doesn't have a lot of writing to his credit (that we know of), and that it is a problem, but in my opinion, it is not a serious one. His style is not dissimilar to that of Erdnase, and one could argue that he was compelled to publish EATCT himself because the magic magazines (which he might have tried repeatedly to get into) gave him little work.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 3:08 pm
by Bill Mullins
jkeyes1000 wrote: The trade customs were indeed intended to be copied . .

Document this, please. Both you and Chris keep saying this, without evidence. I've seen the trade customs that Gallaway copied from the Handbook in print in several locations; none of them give any encouragement to freely reproduce them. I have no doubt that the various trade associations wanted their members to implement the customs. I've seen no evidence that they wanted the customs to be widely copied. (and I'm speaking of the particular customs that Gallaway copied from the Handbook that I wrote of earlier.)

And you can't seriously cast doubt on Gallaway's tendency to credit other authors, using only trade customs as examples.

I didn't use "only trade customs as examples." Did you not see where he copied a long phrase of ordinary words from a 1913 article by Edward Passano? Chris's ebook says, "Olsson has pointed out . . . even mundane sentences and phrases, once they are long enough, can be unique and are therefore clear authorship identifiers. His example was a sentence with 9 words". Chris said that Gallaway copied in Estimating for Printers the 8-word phrase "of the face in which the matter is" from Copyfitting; in fact, he copied the even longer 9-word phrase "of the face in which the matter is set" from Passano. Have we not then shown, by Olsson's own standards, that Gallaway is in fact Passano?

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 3:35 pm
by Roger M.
jkeyes1000 wrote: If Erdnase is to be considered "an original", an innovator, a creative contributor to the annals of magic rather than a mere parrot, he cannot reasonably be supposed to have intuitively surmised the essential elements of successful performing.


Not sure anybody here has ever said Erdnase was "an original" magician ?
What folks have said is that Erdnase created a complete suite of original sleights with playing cards designed to be used to cheat at a gambling table, with most of those sleights having never before been witnessed by human eyes.

That Erdnase had plenty of opportunity to copy and otherwise parse information from a wide variety of available magic books of the day in order to complete the second half of the book has been identified over and over again. The magic is somewhat of a side-story ... perhaps an afterthought to try and dissuade those who would enforce the Comstock Laws from focusing on EATCT as anything other than a magic book.

What Erdnase provided us in the first half of the EATCT is the work of an inveterate gambler and card cheat, who then spent years (perhaps a decade) developing his personal knowledge of cheating at a gaming table into new and effective methods to manipulate cards to an advantage ... new sleights that the hustlers of the day had never seen before ... and likely didn't even imagine were possible.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 3:53 pm
by Bill Mullins
lybrary wrote: Look at this facial comparison I have just completed:

You are aware, are you not, that phrenology has been widely discredited?

a close-up of the head in profile from "The Monotype System" in the middle,

That's not a profile -- he's a good 30 degrees past profile. We are looking at the back-right aspect of his head, not the right side of his head, as a profile would be.

The portrait on the right has him slightly look up.

And you know this how? He looks to be looking straight on at an eye-level camera to me. What is your horizontal reference?

I rotated the profiles so that the faces are also pointing slightly upwards.

It appears you rotated the head about 27-28 degrees anti-clockwise. Are you contending that Gallaway was looking this far up? Or that the keyboard operator was looking, say, 14 degrees down, and you added 13 degrees more to match Gallaway's upward look? Again, how do you know these numbers? What is the horizontal reference for them?

I then drew red horizontal lines to mark certain features on Gallaway’s face, such as eyes, nose tip, mouth, top of head and bottom of chin. As we can see all the features from the center profile line up with Gallaway’s portrait.

Except that you can't accurately locate these features on both pictures, so it's a waste of time.
Eyes: You don't know where the pupil of the central picture is; the line may or may not go through it.
Nose tip: The dark spot of the nostril is much more below the line for the central picture than it is for Gallaway.
Top of Head: You used the top of Gallaway's pate, and the top of the hair on the central picture, allowing nothing for the thickness of the hair itself. (and besides, you've said that since Gallaway is bald in his portrait, he must have been at somewhat bald in 1902 for Smith to be wrong about his age. What happened, did his hair grow back by the time of the central picture? That guy has a full head of hair.)
Bottom of chin: There's nothing specific enough about either chin to say you've matched the "bottom" of one to the other. You've just picked two arbitrary spots and said they matched.

The only features that can be accurately located on both the central picture and Gallaway are the top and bottom of his ear -- and they don't match.

You've used thin red lines to imply a precision that does not exist. You should have used thick red blurry bands. Probably made with crayons.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 4:06 pm
by Bill Mullins
Roger M. wrote:What Erdnase provided us in the first half of the EATCT is the work of an inveterate gambler and card cheat, who then spent years (perhaps a decade) developing his personal knowledge of cheating at a gaming table into new and effective methods to manipulate cards to an advantage . . .


Note also that Erdnase does claim to have spent time at the gaming table ("we bucked the tiger. . . ", his comments to Smith about being a reformed gambler), he does not claim any special conjuring knowledge, and in fact what he says about conjuring often feels like "book learning" ("so far as we can learn from . . . the literature of conjurers"), or theoretical ("we think it would appear quite as natural if the performer were to shuffle the deck himself") rather than first-hand knowledge.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 4:15 pm
by lybrary
Bill Mullins wrote:
lybrary wrote: Look at this facial comparison I have just completed:

You are aware, are you not, that phrenology has been widely discredited?
I am not using phrenology which would require one to deduce character or mental ability from the shape of the head. I am using facial recognition, something your smart phone may be doing already. The phone does this in two dimensions, I am doing it in one dimension.

Bill Mullins wrote:and besides, you've said that since Gallaway is bald in his portrait, he must have been at somewhat bald in 1902 for Smith to be wrong about his age.
I simply pointed out this possibility. He may or may not have had early onset of male pattern baldness. Either way, Smith could have been wrong about his age with or without it.

Bill Mullins wrote:The only features that can be accurately located on both the central picture and Gallaway are the top and bottom of his ear -- and they don't match.
They do match once you take perspective into account, as do all the other features, from eye brows, eyes, nose, mouth and chin. If you look carefully you can even see details of the ear matching. I can see you are getting desperate with your attacks. The new findings about Gallaway provide the first photo evidence that he is Erdnase, via the match of various characteristics of his hands. That must really bother you.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 4:29 pm
by Roger M.
lybrary wrote:...The new findings about Gallaway provide the first photo evidence that he is Erdnase, via the match of various characteristics of his hands.....


Except your "new" findings don't do anything of the sort Chris, and simply repeating them ad nauseam doesn't change that rather obvious fact.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 4:50 pm
by lybrary
Roger M. wrote:
lybrary wrote:...The new findings about Gallaway provide the first photo evidence that he is Erdnase, via the match of various characteristics of his hands.....


Except your "new" findings don't do anything of the sort Chris, and simply repeating them ad nauseam doesn't change that rather obvious fact.
Of course they do. Here are some of the matching characteristics:

1) thumb length is the same. (from Fig 79: 60mm, from fan of rulers 59mm)
2) spatulate thumb
3) relative length of index-finger to pinky
4) large finger nails

It is a wonderful match between the hands Smith drew and the photos of Gallaway's hands. I couldn't be more happy. Would have never thought we would find that many photos of Gallaway's hands.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 5:03 pm
by jkeyes1000
Bill Mullins wrote:
Roger M. wrote:What Erdnase provided us in the first half of the EATCT is the work of an inveterate gambler and card cheat, who then spent years (perhaps a decade) developing his personal knowledge of cheating at a gaming table into new and effective methods to manipulate cards to an advantage . . .


Note also that Erdnase does claim to have spent time at the gaming table ("we bucked the tiger. . . ", his comments to Smith about being a reformed gambler), he does not claim any special conjuring knowledge, and in fact what he says about conjuring often feels like "book learning" ("so far as we can learn from . . . the literature of conjurers"), or theoretical ("we think it would appear quite as natural if the performer were to shuffle the deck himself") rather than first-hand knowledge.


Yes, I am well aware that Erdnase claims to have more knowledge of gambling than magic. But the magic section ironically gives us more fluent and more exuberant instruction on how to perform than does the gambling. The author is enthusiastic, as only a person with real theatrical experience could be. He has an energy, a flair, that clearly comes from an interactive participation with the crowd. This is not mere patter, but patter intermingled and infused with adrenalin, with hauteur. In few words--with stage presence. Unless you can find the book or books that he clipped these tricks from (complete with all the fast talking and bits of business, like the way he plays up the cards "flying" from one sleeve to the other for instance), then I think we can and should assume that this is his own, well rehearsed material.

That the magic portion seems to be an after-thought suggests to me that the author was fully imbued with this skill, that it was "second nature" to him.

For this reason, I suspect that EATCT might have been co-authored. Gallaway could have written the first part and Benedict, the second.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 6:19 pm
by Brad Henderson
jkeyes1000 wrote:
Good point! The purchase of six decks of playing cards doesn't in any way support the hypothesis that Sanders could have demonstrated the moves to Smith. And the reference to "Mutus Nomen" is a pitiable fraction of evidence that he had an interest in magic. In those days, magic was far more fascinating to audiences than it is in this cynical age. It was not uncommon for boys to dream of becoming magicians. It was the equivalent of lads wanting to be astronauts and cowboys in our day. Having a momentary thought about it and developing great skill at it are two very different matters.

And as for the "cleverness" of the anagram--all I will say is that this is a great pitfall of logic, to stop when you get to the point that suits you. If Erdnase were just a bit more ingenious, he might have gone so far as to scramble someone else's name.



you make a lot of claims there. and like all of them you make, i know of no facts to back them up.

show me evidence that boys dreamt of becoming magicians as they did astronauts or that at this point in time audiences were more fascinated with it then at really any other time.

and while buying cards in bulk isn’t proof of cheating expertise, anyone who has cheating expertise would be the sort to buy cards in bulk.

for galloway we have one magic/card book, that was printed by the company he worked for AND is the book whose author we are questioning.

With sanders we have evidence of a WORKING knowledge of at least one magic trick, one that was included in the work under consideration, and evidence that he went through lots of playing cards.

chris has suggested everyone played cards and now keyes is claiming everyone did magic.

i guess if that’s what you have to do to bind yourself to the evidence you wish weren’t there, i guess that’s what you have to do.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 6:27 pm
by Brad Henderson
jkeyes1000 wrote:. But the magic section ironically gives us more fluent and more exuberant instruction on how to perform than does the gambling. The author is enthusiastic, as only a person with real theatrical experience could be. He has an energy, a flair, that clearly comes from an interactive participation with the crowd. This is not mere patter, but patter intermingled and infused with adrenalin, with hauteur. In few words--with stage presence. Unless you can find the book or books that he clipped these tricks from (complete with all the fast talking and bits of business, like the way he plays up the cards "flying" from one sleeve to the other for instance), then I think we can and should assume that this is his own, well rehearsed material.

That the magic portion seems to be an after-thought suggests to me that the author was fully imbued with this skill, that it was "second nature" to him.

For this reason, I suspect that EATCT might have been co-authored. Gallaway could have written the first part and Benedict, the second.


and here we see why those who judge erdnase should have an understanding of the topic before commenting.

clearly someone has no understanding of how fluent erdnase is in his cheating instructionals.

this is because the real lessons remain hidden to the novice. Instead he sees depth in the section that is revealed only most superficially.

and hey, i’m a very experienced performer, but no one would call me enthusiastic

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 6:28 pm
by Bob Coyne
lybrary wrote: Here are some of the matching characteristics:

1) thumb length is the same. (from Fig 79: 60mm, from fan of rulers 59mm)
2) spatulate thumb
3) relative length of index-finger to pinky
4) large finger nails

It is a wonderful match between the hands Smith drew and the photos of Gallaway's hands. I couldn't be more happy. Would have never thought we would find that many photos of Gallaway's hands.

Even assuming the illustration is of Gallway:
1) Erdnase hand illustrations show wildly varying sizes. They're not consistently drawn. So it's not possible to know his hand size from the illustrations.

3) Index-finger to pinky doesn't matter if the other fingers don't match (which they don't). As I wrote earlier...The index finger in the Gallaway illustration is very short and extends just to the last joint of the middle finger (the base of the last phalange). In Erdnase Fig 79, the index finger is 2/3 of the way up the middle finger fingernail, which is very far past the last joint. And even if the Erdnase middle finger is bent to make it appear shorter, the joints would have to bend A LOT in order for the index finger to extend that far relative to it. With that amount of bending, the last phalange of the middle finger would be at an sharp angle away from the viewer. And at that angle, you'd be lucky to see the middle fingernail at all. It certainly wouldn't look relatively head-on and normal, like it does in Fig 79.

So I don't see any way that the proportions of the fingers could be considered to be the same in the two illustrations.

But that all ignores the issue that neither illustration (the Erdnase one certainly) is likely to be realistic/accurate in terms of sizes and proportions in the first place. So unless that was established, any comparison of the actual hands is meaningless.

4) fingernails on the Gallaway illustration are very small. So that's an indication the illustration isn't accurate (assuming he had large fingernails). And I don't believe we can know anything about Erdnase in that regard given the other inaccuracies in the illustrations or the process by which they were drawn.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 7:09 pm
by lybrary
Bob Coyne wrote:But that all ignores the issue that neither illustration (the Erdnase one certainly) is likely to be realistic/accurate in terms of sizes and proportions in the first place. So unless that was established, any comparison of the actual hands is meaningless.
Two illustrators of magic books, Richard Kaufman and Gregg Webb, say they are traced from photos. Even Smith commented that he probably traced them. What more evidence do you need?

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 7:29 pm
by Bob Coyne
lybrary wrote:
Bob Coyne wrote:But that all ignores the issue that neither illustration (the Erdnase one certainly) is likely to be realistic/accurate in terms of sizes and proportions in the first place. So unless that was established, any comparison of the actual hands is meaningless.
Two illustrators of magic books, Richard Kaufman and Gregg Webb, say they are traced from photos. Even Smith commented that he probably traced them. What more evidence do you need?

If he traced, then he did a poor job given that the illustrations are not close to being consistent or accurate. You can see that by comparing illustrations where the hands sometimes look huge relative to the cards (eg figs 5, 11, 61). And other cases where the card is too wide (fig 77).

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 7:41 pm
by jkeyes1000
I think I could make a good case for Gallaway, based on the anagram idea. Now, "S.W. Erdnase" works out to be "Reads news"--yes? And Gallaway had been a proof reader. Not only that, but according to Chris, he had some sort of connection with a German-language newspaper.

Well? You've got to admit, that's cleverer than just scrambling one's own name!

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 7:44 pm
by Brad Henderson
lybrary wrote:
Bob Coyne wrote:But that all ignores the issue that neither illustration (the Erdnase one certainly) is likely to be realistic/accurate in terms of sizes and proportions in the first place. So unless that was established, any comparison of the actual hands is meaningless.
Two illustrators of magic books, Richard Kaufman and Gregg Webb, say they are traced from photos. Even Smith commented that he probably traced them. What more evidence do you need?


the photos.

otherwise it’s just speculation.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 7:58 pm
by lybrary
jkeyes1000 wrote:I think I could make a good case for Gallaway, based on the anagram idea. Now, "S.W. Erdnase" works out to be "Reads news"--yes? And Gallaway had been a proof reader. Not only that, but according to Chris, he had some sort of connection with a German-language newspaper.

Well? You've got to admit, that's cleverer than just scrambling one's own name!
Gallaway was a newspaper man. He learned the printer's art at the Delphos Weekly Herald starting with 15 years of age. At age 17 he already wrote editorials. Later he typeset for a German newspaper in Indiana. Then he planned to start a German newspaper in Delphos but instead started an English one in Fort Payne, AL, called the Payne Weekly People. Those are all things that happened before Expert was published. Gallaway was a newspaper man in the first part of his professional career.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 8:05 pm
by Bill Mullins
lybrary wrote: Would have never thought we would find that many photos of Gallaway's hands.

You have exactly one known photograph of Gallaway's hands, and it is insufficiently detailed to measure anything.

All these other pictures you are saying belong to Gallaway? Wishful thinking. There is no evidence to support the contention that they are his.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 8:14 pm
by Bill Mullins
Brad Henderson wrote:and hey, i’m a very experienced performer, but no one would call me enthusiastic

Well, FWIW, you've got hauteur down pat <G>.

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 8:17 pm
by lybrary
Bill Mullins wrote:
lybrary wrote: Would have never thought we would find that many photos of Gallaway's hands.

You have exactly one known photograph of Gallaway's hands, and it is insufficiently detailed to measure anything.

All these other pictures you are saying belong to Gallaway? Wishful thinking. There is no evidence to support the contention that they are his.
We have more than twenty photos. His authorship of the Monotype System is wonderfully supported by his unattributed re-use, linguistic fingerprint, and photographic evidence. I could hardly wish for stronger evidence than that. Many authorship cases have to solely rely on the linguistic fingerprint. Here we have three independent pieces of evidence. Beautiful!

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 8:56 pm
by Leonard Hevia
Zenner wrote:I must be missing something somewhere.


Probably because you still haven't read Bob's essay on the writing similarities between Sanders and Erdnase.

lybrary wrote:His authorship of the Monotype System is wonderfully supported by his unattributed re-use, linguistic fingerprint, and photographic evidence. I could hardly wish for stronger evidence than that.


You consider that strong evidence? Stronger evidence might put Gallaway walking into a gambling joint. Not that Monotype system nonsense. Linguistic fingerprint? Gallaway's writing does not resemble Erdnase.

Keep looking...

Re: ERDNASE

Posted: April 30th, 2018, 9:20 pm
by Bill Mullins
lybrary wrote:We have more than twenty photos. His authorship of the Monotype System is wonderfully supported by his unattributed re-use, linguistic fingerprint, and photographic evidence.

1. There is no reason at all to suppose that the photos in the Monotype books are of Gallaway, or that they even all are of the same person. You are creating this out of thin air.
2. "His authorship . . . is wonderfully supported by . . . photographic evidence." But I thought you based the photo ID on the authorship. Which came first? the Chicken or the Egg? Circular reasoning, chasing your tail . . .

Here we have three independent pieces of evidence.
They aren't independent (too tightly linked to each other), and they aren't evidence. It is speculation that you have convinced yourself has meaning.