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Cards Across
A proto-Cards Across was described as “The Strange Subtraction” in R.P.'s Ein Spiel Karten, 1853, p. 55 of the Pieper translation. In it, a spectator held a packet of cards she counted herself, and is then asked how many cards she wants added to it. Upon recounting, she has that many more cards. It's essentially one half of the modern Cards Across effect. A similar routine can also be found in Jean-Nicholas Ponsin's La Nouvelle Magie Blanche Dévoilée, 1853, p. 106 of this edition, under the title “La multiplication des cartes dans les mains d'une personne”. This trick has been published by Jean Hugard in an English translation in More Card Manipulation, Series 3, 1940, p. 31, as “The Multiplication of Cards While in the Someone's Hands”.
Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin later published the more contemporary two-packet version in Les Secrets de la Magie et de la Prestidigitation, 1868, p. 87 of the Hoffmann translation.
The plot itself seems to be much older, as variants have cropped up in earlier, unpublished books. It was described in the anonymous Asti Manuscript, c. 1700, p. 58 of the Pieper translation. This manuscript was translated in Gibecière, Vol. 8 No. 1, Winter 2013, p. 29-234. In the same manuscript, there are other variants, including a hybrid Cards Across / ACAAN.
For surveys on the plot, see also the article “Some Aspects of the 'Flying Cards'” by Peter Warlock in the Hoffmann Memorial Lecture, June 1953 (published as a supplement to the Magic Circular), Reinhard Müller's Escorial manuscript Flying Cards, 1984/85, as well as Paul Hallas' Across the Void, 2005.
Different Colored Backs Variant
The embellishment of having the cards that travel come from a packet with a contrasting back color seems to have been developed in the 1920s, most likely by Nate Leipzig, with Paul Le Paul being a second possibility. Leipzig described his method, “Leipzig's Red and Blue Pack”, in The Sphinx, Vol. 38 No. 4, June 1939, p. 97, where he writes, “For some time past I have been doing this trick with an addition which makes it even more effective to the audience. The addition is one of using two different color decks so that ten of the cards are from a blue back pack and ten of them are from a red back deck.”
Paul Le Paul is documented doing a twenty-card Cards Across with red- and blue-backed cards in 1929; see The Sphinx, Vol. 27 No. 12, Feb. 1929, pp. 555 and 557, both top left; and The Linking Ring, Vol. 10 No. 2, Apr. 1930, p. 229, top right. Le Paul and Leipzig were friends. In the introduction to The Card Magic of Paul Le Paul, 1949, p. 18, Robert Parrish attests to Le Paul's admiration of Leipzig and comments on Le Paul's Cards Across presentation using red- and blue-backed cards. Parrish acknowledges Cards Across as “a favorite trick of Leipzig” and goes on to talk about the red- and blue-back embellishment, which he seems to attribute to Le Paul. This leaves the origin of the idea cloudy, although it would be uncharacteristic of Leipzig, whose honesty has never been questioned, to publish his “Red and Blue Pack” without mentioning his friend, if he received the idea from Le Paul.
Victor Farelli was the first to publish instances of a contrasting backs Cards Across in Farelli's Card Magic, Part 2, 1933, “A Study in Blue and White” and “The 'Simplex' Thirty Cards”, pp. 51-54. Farelli mentions his starting point was David Devant's monochrome “Thirty Card Trick” in Devant's Lessons in Conjuring, 1922, p. 1. Farelli, in introducing his “'Simplex' Thirty Cards” writes, “Some years ago I worked out a non-sleight of hand method for obtaining the same result as that described in the previous section.” This leaves the reader to wonder about the number that “some years” might include. Farelli also states that he never performed the trick publicly. As for “A Study in Blue and White”, Farelli later dated its invention as “About 1932”; see Thanks to Leipzig, 1948, p. 24.