The earliest known record of vanishing a card from a packet or deck by secretly using moisture to adhere it behind another card appears in Ellis Stanyon's column “Original Lessons in Magic”, in the Nov. 1902 issue of Magic, Vol. 3 No. 2, p. 10. Stanyon's title for the trick in which the idea is presented is “A New Disappearing Card”. While certainty in the matter of invention is risky with Stanyon, between this title and the occurrence of “original” in the title of his column, it would seem he is claiming the idea as his invention.

See also: Secretly Adhering Cards Together with Moisture.