In Book XVIII of his De subtiltate (1550), Girolamo Cardano reported having seen a trick in which three separate, solid rings were thrown into the air and came down interlinked. He also mentions an effect of “uniting iron chains while the links remain intact.” These tricks involved just a single linking of rings or chain links. They can be considered forefathers of the Linking Rings routines developed later.

Early reports of performances in China of the Linking Rings are given in Yeon Haeng Rok, a compilation of travel accounts by Korean diplomats while they traveled through China from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth. Zhang Boxue, a scholar of Chinese conjuring history, provides this translation of a report written on December 28, 1729, by Kim Sun-hyeop, which appears in Yeon Haeng Rok: “The performer held two iron rings, each about half a foot wide. He raised them simultaneously and slowly brought them together. Just as the two rings were about to approach each other, they suddenly and skillfully linked, as if originally cast as one. With a gentle pull, they separated. Whenever the rings approached each other again, they would link; a slight pull would separate them. The movements were smooth and effortless. Sometimes one ring was tossed high and caught by the other, immediately linking; sometimes it was thrown horizontally and struck by the other, again instantly linking.” Zhang Boxue further explains: “In Yeon Haeng Rok there are multiple accounts of Linking Rings performances. Some performers used two rings, while others performed with larger sets, such as six rings. Some used large rings, while others used small ones. Some performed solo, while others invited spectators to examine their rings.” All these accounts, made by various Korean envoys over the years, described performances but did not concern themselves with methods.

In 1764, a detailed explanation of the method behind the Linking Rings was published in Japan, in Hirase Hose’s Hôkasen. Japanese magicians came to call the trick the “Chinese Rings.” While no early record of the trick is known to have survived in China, a troupe of Chinese magicians and jugglers touring the U.K. in 1821 were reported doing the Linking Rings, using eight rings and performing a routine having many features that have survived to the present day. See the Liverpool Mercury, Feb. 16, 1821, p. 6, column 1. A Chinese troupe, perhaps the same one, doing a seemingly identical program, was advertised in the Belfast newspaper The Irishman, Apr. 12, 1822, p. 3, column 4.

Written explanations of the trick did not begin to appear in Western literature until the mid-1800s. An early explanation is given by J. N. Ponsin in Nouvelle magie blanche dévoilée, Vol. 2, 1854, p. 39. Three years later the trick was explained in an English work, the anonymously authored The Magicians' Own Book, 1857, p. 31 (also published as The Boy's Own Conjuring Book, 1859).

In the 1840s, Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser created innovations in the Linking Ring routine, although the extant records may confuse his ideas with those of his student Georg Heubeck. See Hofzinser Zauberkünste by Ottokar Fischer, 1942, translated into English by Richard Hatch as The Magic of J. N. Hofzinser, 1985, p. 136. Martin Chapender's routine in Mahatma, Vol. 7 No. 1, July 1903, p. 756, has been said by some to be the first modern routine, which influenced much of what was to come after.

See also: Linking Rings---the Crash Link, Linking Rings---the Silent Link and Linking Finger Rings.