Sidebar
Inversion
The plot of the deck instantly reversing itself appeared in The Sphinx, Vol. 30 No. 7, Sep. 1931, p. 310, as “Sympathy” by O. Meyer. Bill Simon later incorporated the idea as a side plot in his “A Set of Surprises” from Rufus Steele's 52 Amazing Card Tricks, 1949, p. 21. Toni Koynini included the now-modern approach of causing the deck reversal to occur with a visual, magical moment, describing it as part of his Ambitious Card sequence in The Wizard, Vol. 5 No. 51, Sep. 1951, p. 81. Bruce Cervon also used the effect with his “Kellie Displacement” in Epilogue, No. 6, July 1969, p. 43; reprinted in The Cervon File, 1988, p. 50.
The Inversion plot was later popularized by James Lewis, who added the name and outjogged-card feature in Michael Ammar's Encore II, 1981, p. 25 (credited as “Jim Louis”). Another oft-cited source is Richard Kaufman's “The World's Fastest Reverse” from CardMagic, 1979, p. 35, but he, too, was several decades late to the plot.
Chris Kenner has a well-known variant, “Perversion”, in Out of Control, 1992, p. 34. On the F.F.F.F. convention video, Secret Session #3, 1994, Bill Kalush claims this item is his invention and not Kenner's.