The practice of holding four cards, each between a pair of adjacent fingers of one hand, dates back at least to the early 1900s. Reinhard Müller found a photo of Servais Le Roy posing with the cards in this position; see Milbourne Christopher's Illustrated History of Magic, 1973, p. 298. However, no evidence is known of the cards being rolled down into this position. It was probably a pose, achieved by one hand putting the cards into place in the other.

The history of the one-handed roll-down flourish is detailed in The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley, Vol. II by Stephen Minch, 1994, p. 13. Alex Elmsley was the first to roll down cards into positions between the fingers, like coin and billiard ball manipulators before him (see Elmsley's Low Cunning American lecture notes, 1959, p. 2. Elmsley was directly inspired by Hans Trixter's “Manipulated Four Aces” from Abra, Vol. 6 No. 139, Sep. 25 1948, p. 131. Trixter produced the Aces with one hand and then transferred them into the final position in his other hand.

A related idea is “Finger Stand” in Ben Berger's Highlight Magic, 1941, p. 20. This again isn't a roll-down, as one hand places the cards between the fingers of the other for display.

In Elmsley's roll-down production, the fourth card is produced in the opposite hand and added to the previous three cards between the fingers. Magic Christian (Christian Stelzel) of Austria devised a four-card roll-down done with just one hand; see his Magic of Christian, Part 2, lecture notes, 1972, p. 7; also Genii, Vol. 36 No. 12, Dec. 1972, p. 547.

Roughly twelve years later, Japan's Mahka Tendo developed a different fingering for the flourish, which was published in the Magical Arts Journal (M.A.J.), Vol. 1, No. 2, Sep. 1986, p. 6; and Vol. 1, No. 3, Oct. 1986, p. 8.

• Category in Denis Behr's "Conjuring Archive"