This palm was published by Ed Marlo in The Cardician, 1953, p. 55. Stanley Collins also wrote up the palm in his “Zeta Four Ace Trick” from Gems of Personal Prestidigitation [1952], p. 24. This book was never actually published, and didn't see the light of day until inclusion in Edwin Dawes's Stanley Collins: Conjurer, Collector, and Iconoclast, 2002. However, the manuscript for it was privately circulated shortly after its composition for evaluation by select magicians in the U.K. and U.S.

In Marlo's description in The Cardician, he claimed he had been protecting the idea for years, and that it had been moving through the underground for a time. This claim may have been motivated, in part, by the sleight appearing in Collins's manuscript; among the private circle who read it Marlo would likely have been a member. It's impossible to say if news of the sleight got as far as Collins, who lived in St. Leonards-on-Sea, England, previous to 1952; or if Collins's manuscript was read by Marlo shortly before he published The Cardician. Nor, without further evidence, can independent invention be ruled out.