With this technique, a face-down deck is held from above, with the top card secretly sidejogged. Throwing the deck down onto the table causes the sidejogged card to flip over and land face up on top of the deck. This is described in The Boy's Own Book, 1829, p. 202. It also turns up in a trick called “In Flight” from R.P.'s Ein Spiel Karten, 1853, p. 60 of the Pieper translation.
An anonymous notebook from c. 1800 contains this technique as well, suggesting that the move dates even further back. Will Houstoun transcribed the manuscript and published it as The Notebook, 2009, p. 69.
An earlier, related technique appears in Henri Decremps's Testament de Jerome Sharp, 1786, p. 162 of the Hugard translation (unpublished). In this handling, the deck is held in dealing grip, and instead of dropping the deck, the magician retains his hold on it as he drops his hand quickly downward, causing the sidejogged card to flip over onto the table.