Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

User Tools

Site Tools


Multiple Shift

Edwin Sachs described a multiple shift in Sleight of Hand, 1877, p. 96. It was a secret maneuver, much like a traditional pass.

S. W. Erdnase, when explaining his Diagonal Palm Shift—a notable refinement on the procedure given by Sachs—in The Expert at the Card Table, 1902, mentions that the sleight may be done with several cards placed at various positions in the pack (p. 141).

A multiple shift done in the action of an overhand shuffle was published in Jean Hugard's Card Manipulations, Nos. 1 and 2, 1933, p. 14, “The Modern Dovetail Shuffle”. Hugard gives no attribution for the sleight, but it may well be Cardini's, as it appeared five years later, with just a minor handling change, in J. N. Hilliard's Greater Magic, 1938, p. 545, “The Cardini Ace Trick”. Greater Magic was edited by Hugard, so it appears he learned in the interim between publications that the sleight was Cardini's.

The first instance of the approach using an open Hindu shuffle action was recorded by Dr. Jacob Daley in his notebooks under the title “Four Ace Bevel Push,” and invented by him in the 1930s, as can be seen in Jacob Daley's Notebooks, n.d. (c. 1974), n.p. (Item 334). A reconstruction of Daley's sleight, made from his four-line note, is done by Karl Fulves in Epilogue, No. 13, Nov. 1971, p. 102. Ed Marlo reinvented the basic principle in his push-in Ace control, in Marlo in Spades, 1947, p. 7, which he later renamed the Spade Multiple Shift in his Multiple Shift, 1961, p. 2. The first multiple shift using the Hindu Shuffle to be published was Dai Vernon's, in Harlan Tarbell's Tarbell Course in Magic, Vol. 3, 1943, p. 192. Vernon is on record as saying his starting point was Jack McMillan's Plunger Principle.

Also see: D'Amico Multiple Shift.