The Thayer Manufacturing Company released "The Original Eli's Die Box" in 1921, first advertising it in the August 1921 issue of The Sphinx, Vol. 20 No. 6, p 216. The ad including these peculiarly pointed leading lines:

ORIGINATED BY MR. RALPH E. HACKMAN OF PHILADELPHIA, PA.
Secret and drawings delivered by him to THE THAYER MANUFACTURING COMPANY, November 17, 1920

—which makes one wonder if a competing release by another dealer was anticipated. Hackman's die box was round and allowed one or more dice to be shaken in it, rattling around; but its depth secretly prevented the dice from turning over, so the numbers on top remained there to provide a force. The top and bottom of the box looked identical, so the box could be secretly turned over to force a second number, which consisted of complements of seven to the numbers on the opposite sides of the dice.

The idea of replacing the specially designed box with an unprepared matchbox of a depth that allowed rattling but no turning of the dice was published four years later: “The X-Ray Trick” by J. Whitehead in Edward Bagshawe's Magical Monthly, Vol. 2 No. 11, Aug. 1925, p. 217.

The method in which the matchbox drawer is secretly divided, with a pair of loose dice on one end and a pair of fixed dice on the other, was described by U. F. Grant in his “Dice and Match Box Mystery” in The Sphinx, Vol. 28 No. 8, Oct. 1929, p. 308.