Max Maven believes the earliest published instance of this method of confirming the identity of a torn and restored card is in Henri Decremps's La magie blanche dévoilée (1784; English translation published the following year). Decremp claims to expose the methods (and hence the effects) of Pinetti, based on a performance observed in 1783. One of the routines explained is “The Card Nailed to the Wall by a Pistol Shot,” which uses a version of the torn-corner identification. Further appearances of the idea in print occur in Hoffmann's Modern Magic (1876), Roterberg's New Era Card Tricks (1897) and Hilliar's Modern Magician's Handbook (1902). The idea also crops up in early magazines; e.g., Mahatma (1895), The Sphinx (1904), The Magician (1906), The Wizard (1907), Stanyon's Magic (1907). Published versions continue to appear, with increasing frequency, during the nineteen-teens. By the 1920s the idea had become standard and there are dozens of applications.