This full-deck reflected stack—in which the mate to the top card is the bottom card, the mate to the second card from the top is second from the bottom, etc.—was first suggested by Eric F. Impey in 1931; see “The Amazing Memory” in Try This One, p. 5. Impey also describes a related stack with twenty-six duplicate cards, where the top twenty-six cards are mirrored by their duplicates in the bottom half of the deck: “Synchrono—A Mechanical Pack”, p. 4.

While Impy's high estimation of the utility of these setups is warranted, the Mirror Stack has been most appreciated in conjunction with the Stay-Stack Principle, which preserves the mirrored arrangement while the deck is given perfect faro shuffles.