While credited to Dai Vernon, earlier published versions of this trick include Joe Berg's “A Miracle Maybe” in Martin Gardner's Cut the Cards, 1942, p. 22, and Audley Walsh's “Improvisation” in Rufus Steele's 52 Amazing Card Tricks, 1949, p. 50. Milt Kort recalls that Stewart James described the effect and procedures in a letter, long predating Lewis Ganson's description of the Vernon handling (see More Inner Secrets of Card Magic, 1960, p. 76).

A discussion of James's approach, which he called “The Face-Up Prediction,” can be found in The James File, Volume 1, 2000, p. 1000. James claims to have created the trick in 1939.

An even earlier approach to arriving at a force card's position through on-the-spot finagling was published by (but specifically not claimed by) Theodore Annemann in 202 Methods of Forcing, 1933, p. 14 (p. 10 of the fourth edition). Annemann didn't describe the method in 101 Methods of Forcing, 1932, which suggests that he may have learned it in the intervening year. The technique Annemann outlined wasn't as wide-reaching and varied as those developed by James, Berg, Walsh, and Vernon, as it focused exclusively on a mathematical approach, but it was a clear precursor to the more robust versions we see today.