Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Tunnel Change

The first of these changes while the card is pushed at right angles through the deck seems to be by Charles Jordan, in his marketed “Diabolical Reversed Card (Improved)”, 1921. This uses a half card gimmick to effect a visual reversal of a card. Jordan thanks a Mr. DeForrest of San Francisco for supplying “certain suggestions adopted in the working.” See Karl Fulves's Charles T. Jordan: Collected Tricks, 1975, p. 100. There is no mention of the nature of the trick this one improves on, so there is a good chance the original “Diabolical Reversed Card,” most likely by Jordan, may have also been a tunnel-style change. Jordan did advertise a “Diabolical Reversed Card,” but this may have been the same “improved” version, truncated for space purposes in the ads. The differences between the two tricks may have been DeForrest's suggestions.

Jordan's effect is a clear ancestor of Jeff Busby's "Into the Fourth Dimension...and Beyond" (1973), which grew to become hugely popular when Roy Walton's handling was marketed a year later under the name of “Card Warp”.

In the 1920s, Jordan's “Diabolical Reversed Card” spawned related card changes occurring as a card is passed perpendicularly through the pack. See “The 'T-Square' Color Change” in Collins's Card Conceits by Stanley Collins, 1925, p. 5; “A Card Turns Over!” in Larsen and Wright's L.W. Card Mysteries, 1928, p. 18; and early entries made in the 1920s by T. Page Wright in his notebook, later published as Page Wright's Notebook, 1933, pp. 6 & 9, the latter credited to Jack McMillen.

For a more extended history of the Tunnel Change, see Ken Krenzel's Close-up Impact by Stephen Minch, 1990, p. 140.