In this effect, a large blue checker set on top of a stack of yellow checkers moves mysteriously first to the middle of the stack, then to the bottom.

In 1898 or earlier, Martinka marketed a similar effect, “Tao-Li-Tao: The Chinese Mystery”. This can be found in their 1898 catalog, Item 94. The opening line of the catalog listing is: “Our own invention.” “Tao-Li-Tao” produces just one movement of a black checker in a stack of yellow ones, but the movement occurs visibly without cover. The trick is explained in the December 1904 issue of The Magician (Vol. 1 No. 1, p. 4). With a strange touch of vagueness, the article begins: “This clever illusion, suitable for stage or drawing room, we understand is the invention of Messrs. Martinka, of New York.” The method bears no resemblance to that of “The Blue Phantom”.

In the May 1914 issue of The Sphinx (Vol. 13 No. 3, p. 57), Joseph Dunninger offered another method for this effect, “Dunninger's Chinese Disks”, which is mechanically simpler in operation than the method of “Tao-Li-Tao”. The Dunninger method employs a tube to cover the checker stack while the odd-colored checker makes its single journey.

Another variation, “Trucks”, was contributed by F. W. Warren to the September 1916 issue of The Sphinx (Vol. 15 No. 7, p. 132). Warren employed a spring mechanism to raise the center post (a wand) of the pedestal for the height of a checker. This—combined with a full-length shell that covered the entire stack of checkers, and a duplicate blue checker resting on top of the shell, all hidden in a covering tube—was used to produce the effect of the blue checker rising from the center of the stack to the top.

All three methods—“Tao-Li-Tao”, Dunninger's, Warren's—produce only one movement of the odd-colored checker, making the trick half as effective as “The Blue Phantom. All three authors link the adjective “Chinese” to the effect, Dunninger apparently following Martinka's lead.

In 1929, Ottokar Fischer established the title “Blue Phantom” and explained the method for causing the odd-colored checker to move its position twice in the stack. Fischer called the trick “Das Blaue Wunder” in Das Wunderbuch der Zauberkunst, p. 53; translated into English as Illustrated Magic, 1931, p. 55, where the title “The Blue Phantom” first appeared. The method used a full-length shell, as Warren had, and a gimmicked pedestal capable of producing a duplicate blue checker at the bottom of the stack.

This effect and apparatus was first manufactured by the Vienna magic manufacturer Zauber-Apparate-Fabrik R. Klingl. Klingl, in the company's 1926 catalog, called the trick “Die wandernden Steine” and credited it to Hanns [sic] Trunk. The Austrian magician Hans Trunk (1887-1966) was a student of Ottokar Fischer. Oddly, while Fischer introduced the trick as “invented not long ago which attracted well-deserved attention in magical circles”, he failed to mention Trunk in his description of “The Blue Phantom”. In the December 1924 issue of Magie, Vol. 7 No. 12, p. 889, Trunk is reported to have performed “Das Blaue Wunder” at an Austrian Magischer Klub meeting on September 16, 1924. Trunk gave a history of his invention of the trick and its working in Magie, Vol. 23 No. 3, Mar. 1940, p. 75; then in his subsequent book, Das Trunk Buch: Hans Trunk's Magische Memoiren, 1943. Portions of this book were eventually translated into English and run as a series in Abracadabra in 1951. “The Blue Phantom” is explained in the Feb. 10, 1951 issue, Vol. 11 No. 263, p. 37. It is impossible to say if Trunk had run across Warren's 1916 “Trucks” and built on it to derive a double-movement of the checker. Both tricks use a full-length shell, a duplicate blue checker and a secret raising of the center post.

Robert J. Albo cites examples of “The Blue Phantom manufactured by Martinka and Co. of New York in 1900 (see Final Classic Magic with Apparatus, Vol. VI, 1986, pp. 328 and 349) and 1910 (Further Classic Magic with Apparatus, Vol. IV, 1982, pp. [358 and 359]). In Classic Magic Supplement II, 1999, p. 39, Albo explains that the Martinka method involves a shell that covers just half the stack of checkers, in contrast to Klingl's full-length shell. However, Albo's dating and identification of the apparatus has so far resisted verification. No Martinka catalogs of the period he cites have been found that list this trick, nor ads, mentions or reviews in trade journals. The half shell was a feature of the version of the trick manufactured by the Thayer Magical Manufacturing Co. Thayer also made several changes in the mechanics of the apparatus. And they used Fischer's title "The Blue Phantom". Thayer began advertising their “Blue Phantom” in December 1930 (see The Linking Ring, Vol. 10 No. 10, [p. 1246]). Their ad cites Fischer's Wunderbuch der Zauberkunst. Albo appears to have misdated and mistaken two examples of another manufacturer's (possibly Thayer's) apparatus as being from Martinka.