Bill Mullins wrote:You said "this thing doesn't exist" and I showed that it did.
It doesn't exist in an apples to apples comparison. I was assuming you would understand this tacit commonsense condition.
Bill Mullins wrote:You said "this thing doesn't exist" and I showed that it did.
Bill Mullins wrote:You've posited that the author used the reversal of a name that was not his own. Can you show an example of anyone else who has ever done this?
lybrary wrote:Bill Mullins wrote:pen-name: Boz (reversed Zob which is a valid family name https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse ... b&uidh=000 )
real name: Charles Dickens
The last one is particularly interesting because Gallaway's favorite author was Dickens.
observer wrote:"Boz" was the childhood nickname of Dickens' little brother. Originally "Mose", then "Boz", as in Mose pronounced with one's nose stuffed up from a cold. No connection with any surname.
performer wrote:... if it were to be discovered without all doubt that the author's real name was S.W. Erdnase all along!
lybrary wrote:Bill Mullins wrote:You've posited that the author used the reversal of a name that was not his own. Can you show an example of anyone else who has ever done this?
pen-name: Azorín (reversed Niroza which is a valid family name. Examples here https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q= ... nit=public )
real name: José Martínez Ruiz (and this author isn't some obscure person like your examples)
pen-name: Boz (reversed Zob which is a valid family name https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse ... b&uidh=000 )
real name: Charles Dickens
The last one is particularly interesting because Gallaway's favorite author was Dickens.
lybrary wrote:observer wrote:"Boz" was the childhood nickname of Dickens' little brother. Originally "Mose", then "Boz", as in Mose pronounced with one's nose stuffed up from a cold. No connection with any surname.
Wikipedia states 'apparently adopted'. In other words they don't know for sure. Nobody knows if Erdnase created his name reversing it from Andrews. It is all speculation.
observer wrote:"... the signature of Boz. This was the nickname of a pet child, his youngest brother Augustus, whom in honour of The Vicar of Wakefield he had dubbed Moses, which being facetiously pronounced through the nose became Boses, and being shortened became Boz."
from The Life of Charles Dickens (1872-74) by John Forster. Forster was a long-time friend of Dickens, and I think he can be trusted rather better than whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry.
"Boz," Dickens himself says, "was a very familiar household word to me long before I was an author, and so I came to adopt it."
lybrary wrote: . . . because Gallaway's favorite author was Dickens.
[Gallaway's] one great hobby is astronomy
Bill Mullins wrote:He had one hobby, and it was astronomy. Not magic. Not playing cards. Not gambling.
lybrary wrote:observer wrote:"... the signature of Boz. This was the nickname of a pet child, his youngest brother Augustus, whom in honour of The Vicar of Wakefield he had dubbed Moses, which being facetiously pronounced through the nose became Boses, and being shortened became Boz."
from The Life of Charles Dickens (1872-74) by John Forster. Forster was a long-time friend of Dickens, and I think he can be trusted rather better than whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry.
I trust Dickens even more. Here is what he wrote:"Boz," Dickens himself says, "was a very familiar household word to me long before I was an author, and so I came to adopt it."
In other words, he first adopted this name. There wasn't anything with his brother. Foster then later interpreted it the way he describes, but that is not coming from Dickens himself.
Bill Mullins wrote:The fact that he didn't practice magic as a hobby is one more reason to be certain that "The Magic Wand" and "bag of tricks" are figures of speech that have no literal connection with conjuring.
Bill Mullins wrote:Are you suggesting he did card magic at a professional level in 1923? Odd that there is no record of it, then.
Bill Mullins wrote:He wasn't a working card shark in 1923, nor had he ever been.
Bill Mullins wrote:Gallaway didn't have any special interest in cards, as either a gambler or magician, ...
Tom Gilbert wrote:Chris, you mention he had magic and gambling books in his library. What else did he have besides EATCT?
On a recent excursion into a used book salon he asked for magic card and gambling books, as was his wont. The proprietor had several gambling books on hand, that he was holding for Rufus Steele. When Bill Griffiths told him that Rufus Steele was dead, the shop owner then offered the books to Bill. There was a first edition of Erdnase in the lot and Bill bought it and gave it to me. There was nothing odd about the copy BUT there was a bookplate: Library of Edward Gallaway. In a couple of the other gambling books was a similar bookplate.
Bill Mullins wrote:However, the bent corner dodge is mentioned in English-language accounts in other places well before either Roterberg or Conradi. Devol, in Forty Years A Gambler (1887) mentions the bent corner in a description of the game, as does Fools of Fortune by Quinn (1890).
So the Monte description in Expert isn't particularly strong evidence that Erdnase read German.
Zenner wrote:I have just been reading Chris's latest comments on Erdnase learning 'The Card Through Handkerchief' from German books of 1900 and 1901. I would just like to point out that Roterberg said in his New Era Card Tricks (1897) that the ‘Card Through Handkerchief’ had been invented in Chicago. See page 57 re. ‘Penetration of Matter’ — “The following trick, which originated in this city several years ago, has since then become popular with conjurers the world over, being no doubt one the of best of latter-day card tricks.”
Zenner wrote:I have just been reading Chris's latest comments on Erdnase learning 'The Card Through Handkerchief' from German books of 1900 and 1901. I would just like to point out that Roterberg said in his New Era Card Tricks (1897) that the ‘Card Through Handkerchief’ had been invented in Chicago. See page 57 re. ‘Penetration of Matter’ — “The following trick, which originated in this city several years ago, has since then become popular with conjurers the world over, being no doubt one the of best of latter-day card tricks.”
lybrary wrote: All of this strongly suggests Erdnase was familiar with several of the German magic books from that time. None of this has anything to do with any candidate. It is simply a more thorough search of Erdnase's likely sources. It is a new insight gained purely from studying Erdnase's book more carefully than it has been in the past. German magic literature was clearly part of Erdnase's source material, the magic literature he read and studied.
Zenner wrote:lybrary wrote: All of this strongly suggests Erdnase was familiar with several of the German magic books from that time. None of this has anything to do with any candidate. It is simply a more thorough search of Erdnase's likely sources. It is a new insight gained purely from studying Erdnase's book more carefully than it has been in the past. German magic literature was clearly part of Erdnase's source material, the magic literature he read and studied.
"It ain't necessarily so!"
If the man who became "Erdnase" invented the tricks you mention, in Chicago, several years before 1897, then it could well be that the Germans were copying HIM. Roterberg could have been the one who circulated the stuff back in Germany without "Erdnase" (whoever he was) knowing. He certainly credited 'The Card Through Handkerchief' (Penetration of Matter) to a Chicago-based magician, without naming him. I wonder why he didn't name him? If only he had
lybrary wrote:While I am not categorically denying that possibility, the facts speak against it. Erdnase claims ownership for several things in his book. To the best of our knowledge he was always correct when he claimed he was the originator.
Erdnase himself states he exhaustively studied the magic and gambling literature.
Bill Mullins wrote:lybrary wrote:While I am not categorically denying that possibility, the facts speak against it. Erdnase claims ownership for several things in his book. To the best of our knowledge he was always correct when he claimed he was the originator.
Not so. He claimed both the Longitudinal Shift ("for which we have to thank no one", p. 130) and the S.W.E. Shift ("We confess some satisfaction in having originated . . . ", p. 134). Both had previously appeared in C. H. Wilson's The 52 Wonders, 1877.
Bill Mullins wrote:Erdnase himself states he exhaustively studied the magic and gambling literature.
He mentions a couple of times being familiar with the conjuring literature ("works on conjuring . . . the whole category," p. 13; "single card feat in the whole calendar," p. 122; "the exhibitions and literature of conjurers", p. 126). Remind us, please, of where he mentions studying the gambling llterature?
Hence this work stands unique in the list of card books. We modestly claim originality for the particular manner of accomplishing many of the manoeuvres described, and believe them vastly superior to others that have come under our observation.
Bill Mullins wrote:"The Three Aces" is the trick where two aces are used to mask the central heart pip in the Ace of Hearts to make it look like a diamond. Previously, masking whole pips had been done to change the apparent value of a card, but this had been thought to be the first time it was used to change the suit.
lybrary wrote: The Wilson book surfaced only recently suggesting that it wasn't a particularly widely distributed title. I think it therefore likely that Erdnase and most everybody else was not familiar with it and that Erdnase independently invented (re-invented) similar moves.
Claiming that something 'stands unique in the list of card books' implies that he was widely read. And since this is the section on gambling he obviously means gambling and other sleight-of-hand books.
Bill Mullins wrote:I also believe that it is more likely that he independently came up with the calculation methods for the Eight Kings stack, rather than copied them from German literature;
Bill Mullins wrote:Note that you may have the direction of information flow backwards. Instead of German to Erdnase, it could well be the other way around. A footnote in The Man Who Was Erdnase quotes Reinhard Mueller saying that "Erdnase's work was known to the German writers at the beginning of the century". It also says that Roterberg sent Conradi material prior to 1896 -- perhaps Roterberg got it from Erdnase? And perhaps all the material you've mentioned as German in origin came originally from Erdnase?