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Center Tear
The earliest known description of the billet-reading method known as the Center Tear appears in Goose Illusion Collection: Illustrated Conjuring (鹅幻汇编: 戏法图说) by Tang Zaifeng, published in China in 1889; see Chapter 5, “Listening to a Character”. The material in the book was compiled by Tang from over thirty years of visits to folk magicians across China and contains a large number of traditional and classic Chinese conjuring effects. The Chinese handling of the Center Tear uses a series of diagonal folds, rather than the two perpendicular folds used in the West. Zhang Boxue, who supplied this reference, provides a translation of the trick:
Listening to a Character
Effect: The performer shows a square piece of paper and draws a circle in its center. A spectator is invited to write a character inside the circle. The paper is then folded along its pre-made creases. The performer brings it to his ear, pretends to listen for a moment and then correctly reveals the character.
Method: A square sheet of white paper, approximately four to five inches per side, is prepared. A small circle about the size of a button is drawn in the exact center. The paper is folded diagonally four or five times into a sharp, pointed shape, creating distinct creases as shown in the illustration. After the spectator writes a character inside the circle and refolds the paper, the performer takes it. As he brings the paper to his ear, he secretly tears away the very tip of the paper point—–which corresponds precisely to the center of the sheet and the marked circle. By gently rubbing and separating the layers of the torn tip between his fingers, he secretly glimpses the character. Finally, the performer chews up the torn paper to destroy the evidence before revealing the spectator’s written character.
In the West, the earliest published description of the center tear was a two-page instruction sheet marketed as “What Is It?”, advertised by Canadian magic dealer Joseph Ovette in the Sep. 1931 issue of The Sphinx, Vol. 30 No. 7, p. 339. This scarce item is reproduced in Al Mann's Tesseract, 1978, p. 17. Ovette, learned the center tear through a letter to him from Canadian magician Sid Lorraine, who was in turn taught it by an amateur magician from the U.S., Joseph Taylor Garrus, who said he learned it from a Mr. Wyman of Boston, of whom nothing is known. Wyman told Garrus he learned the Center Tear from an unnamed fraudulent spirit medium. In Dec. 1928, Lorraine made notes on the move, after having just learned it from Garrus. Lorraine's notes and the full history recorded by him, are reproduced in Mann's Tesseract, pp. 12-18.
After the Center Tear was marketed in 1931, and then published in Aug. 1932 as a Thayer Trick of the Month Club installment, Ne Plus Ultra Reading Method (reproduced in Annemann's Enigma by Todd Karr, 2019, p 165), it was attributed to a number of men. Among them was Joseph Dunninger, who claimed he had used the idea in 1915; see The Jinx, No. 74, Jan. 6, 1940, p. 495. Annemann wrote in the same article that Martin Sunshine (who was reported to be using the Center Tear in the early 1930s) said he had learned the move from Dunninger. This claim suffers from confusion, as shown in Al Mann's account in Mental-ettes, 1976, pp. 16-7. Mann reports that, in a Jan. 25, 1975 conversation with Dunninger, Dunninger disavowed invention of the Center Tear: “'Yes, of course, everybody knew it.' And he [Dunninger] further said that he did not know who invented it and thought that nobody knows. What he meant by 'everybody' knowing the center-tear, he meant the circle of mediums and magicians who were investigating the mediums.” Mann subsequently contacted Martin Sunshine, who replied by letter that he had invented the Center Tear in 1920 and had taught it to Dunninger. When Mann asked Sunshine about his statement to Annemann in 1940 that he had learned the Center Tear from Dunninger, Sunshine did not reply. Clearly, memory was showing its frailty in Sunshine's story.
Mann opens his history of the Center Tear in Mental-ettes (p. 13) with this: “Karl Fulves remarked to me, 'Don't be surprised Al, if some day we find out that the Chinese were using the center tear principle in 1000 B.C.!'” Fulves's joke was more prescient than he knew. All the activity around the Center Tear in North America came mainly forty years after “Listening to a Character” was published in China. Given the distance between that country and the U.S., a case for independent invention might be entertained. Then again, in forty years or longer, an idea can travel a great distance—from West to East or from East to West. The evidence at hand strongly suggests that Chinese magicians and fortunetellers first invented the Center Tear.