Bill Kalush has found of version of this ancient mathematical card effect in Nicolas Chuquet's Triparty, written in 1484, but never published. Only one extant copy is known. The trick is not done with cards, but with coins or other objects, arranged in a circle, but the principle is there.

Kalush also reports that an early, probably the first, published instance of the Clock Trick, done with cards, appears in the third edition, 1658, of Edmund Wingate's Arithmetique Made Easie.

• Category in Denis Behr's "Conjuring Archive"