The trick of controlling a selection to the bottom of the deck, having someone hold the deck firmly at one end, then knocking the cards from his grasp, leaving him holding only the selection, appears in Breslaw's Last Legacy (1784), p. 92. A year later it was also included in Decremps's Testament de Jérôme Sharpe.

This revelation is also described in Ein Spiel Karten by R. P., Prague, 1853, Part 2, item 8, p. 51 of the Pieper translation, under the title of “The Stubborn Card”.