While Paul Le Paul typically gets credit for this sleight due to its appearance in The Card Magic of Le Paul, 1949, p. 101, it appeared earlier as “A Chosen Card” by Walter Gibson in The Magic Wand, Vol. 8, No. 8, Oct. 1919, p. 160, minus the one-handed fan closure described by Le Paul.

Other early published descriptions of the move can be found in The Lost Notebooks of John Northern Hilliard, 2001, p. 116. Hilliard ascribes the move to S. Leo Horowitz, who, due to the date the notebooks were originally compiled (c. 1928), likely preceded Le Paul in this sleight. And again in Farelli's Card Magic, Part Two, 1933, p. 66, under the title “A General Utility 'Location'”. As with Hilliard's similar description, the handling may be judged as less nuanced than Le Paul's, lacking the one-handed fan closure, but it is essentially the same sleight.