This move is credited variously to Henry Christ, Ted Annemann and Dai Vernon. The Annemann reference comes from his use of the sleight in “Red and Blue Decks”, a trick published in a marketed typescript titled Exclusive Secrets of Annemann's Conception published by Frank Lane in 1933. This trick was reprinted by Max Abrams in Annemann's $50 Manuscript, 1976, p. 13. (Corrected details for the original Lane publication were provided by Abrams in the deluxe edition of Annemann: The Life and Times of a Legend, 1992, p. 624.) Annemann also used the move in a variation of “Red and Blue Decks” called “Synthetic Sympathy”, which he published in The Jinx, No. 2, Nov. 1934, np. (page 7 in the run). This trick was later reprinted in in The Tarbell Course in Magic, Vol. 5, 1948, p. 194.

Dai Vernon claimed to have invented this alignment procedure in 1933 (the same year Exclusive Secrets of Annemann's Conception was published), in response to a comment made by Thomas Edison after Vernon's performance of “Cards of Coincidence”. This anecdote appears in The Vernon Chronicles, Vol. 1 by Stephen Minch, 1987, p. 154. “Cards of Coincidence” is explained in Dai Vernon's Further Inner Secrets of Card Magic by Lewis Ganson, 1961, p. 11. The effects of the Annemann and Vernon tricks are very similar, but Vernon's version offers two repetitions of the basic effect.

Henry Christ's claim to the sleight is of the same vintage. Its basis is still being investigated.

* Category in Denis Behr's "Conjuring Archive"