This four-as-four false display that conceals one card of four while apparently showing all four cards was invented by Alex Elmsley and eventually published by him in 1959 in a monograph titled The Four-Card Trick. Elmsley cited Edward Victor's E-Y-E Count and a false display by Eric de la Mare (see The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley, Vol. 1, by Stephen Minch, 1991, 232) as contributing elements to his sleight, which he called the “Ghost Count”, an apparent allusion to Bert Douglas's “My Ghost Card Trick”, published in The Linking Ring, Vol. 8 No. 9, Nov. 1928, p. 723, which trick has a concealment of one of four cards (based on the Glide) that was another influence in creating Elmsley's false display. Elmsley's sleight later became known as the Elmsley Count, after being popularized in Dai Vernon's “Twisting the Aces”. A more comprehensive history of the Elmsley Count is given in The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley, Vol. 1, pp. 21 & 26,

In the original handling of the Elmsley Count, the cards are taken one by one into right-hand dealing grip. The fingertip handling, taught in Vernon's “Twisting the Aces”, which became the standard handling for years, was devised, as Elmsley recalled it, by his friend Jack Avis. Edward Marlo, not having read the original Elmsley handling, reinvented the idea of receiving the cards into right-hand dealing grip (see M-U-M, Vol. 49 No. 7, Dec. 1959, p. 290, “Fourth Handling”).

Later, in Packet Switches, 1971, p. 36, Karl Fulves published, in a trick titled “Double Up”, the first handling for what became known as the Broken or Interrupted Elmsley Count, in which the switch mechanics of the false display are unchanged but the display is halted after the second card is taken and the switch made.