Frederick Montague recorded the earliest known description and application of the topological idea of reversing a portion of a handheld spread. With this he accomplished the control of the card to second from the top of the deck. See Westminster Wizardry, 1928, p. 74. J. B. Bernat used the reversed spread as a method for placing a key card next to a selection. He published this under the title of “Engaño Óptico” in his 1981 book Cartomagia: 30 años después (p. 69). He came up with the idea in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

This predates Piet Forton's claim of sometime in the 1960s. Forton and Wolff von Keyserlingk published their work using the reverse spread to effect a “pass” control in Inside CardMagic II in 1996, p. 47, edited by Oliver Erens, as “Light-reft Spread Pass”. (See the English translation in Concertos for Pasteboard, p. 43.) So Bernat's creation and publication dates both precede Forton's and von Keyserlingk's.

(On a related note, in the Sept. 2002 issue of The Linking Ring, Vol. 82, No. 9, p. 88, Allan Ackerman describes the same idea under the title “Ultimate Gesture Cut”, saying that it had been shown him by a magician whose name he couldn't recall in 1976. Further, its application to the Simon Business Card Prophecy switch is given on p. 95.)