The idea of marking the backs of a deck so that each card back reveals the preceding card in the deck was invented by Theodore DeLand in 1906, with the release of his “Devil's Own Trick” through A. Roterberg. See Conjurer's Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1 No. 4, Dec. 1906, p. 106; and Kaufman's DeLand: Mystery and Madness, 2018, p. 37. Marking each card to indicate the card following it was an inevitable variant.