While Wesley James contributed this control in 1973 to Frank Garcia's Super Subtle Card Miracles (p. 165), see the very similar “To the Top” by J. Stewart Smith in his 1950 booklet Top of the Deck (second phase of “The Ambitious Card” routine). The Smith sleight was reprinted a year previous to the Garcia book, in the April 1972 issue of Pallbearers Review (Vol. 6, No. 6, p. 413).

In The Legendary Kabbala, Ed Marlo claimed that the move was popular as early as 1946. The author, Jon Racherbaumer, wrote the following footnote: “[J. Stewart Smith] admitted that he saw a soldier do the move in 1942.”