The effect of causing a number of cards to cling mysteriously to the hand seems to have entered the public realm before it was recorded in magic's literature. The method using a pin passed through the skin was explained under the title of “The Power of Magnetism” in the Jan. 5, 1895 issue of the Evening Star, a Washington, D.C. newspaper, p. 16.

The trick appeared as “Gravity Defied” in August Roterberg's New Era Card Tricks, 1897, p. 97.

Postdating the method with a pin, Burling Hull invented the method in which a half-circle tab concealed in the back design of a prepared card is used to suspend a circle of loose cards under the palm-down hand. He published this in Sleights, 1914, p. 7, where he says he “invented and Copyrighted” the gimmick in 1907.