The earliest known description of the illusion of having a ring tumble ring by ring down a linked chain seems to be J. T. Ferguson's “The Chinese Rings: A Novelty in Working” in The Magic Wand, Vol. 7 No. 3, Nov. 1916, p. 47. Ferguson describes the sequence done with the chain held horizontally, rather than in the usual vertical position, but the mechanics are the same. It is possible he is claiming credit for the management of the sequence in this position, but since he makes no mention of a preceding version and no earlier description of the tumbling ring illusion has been discovered, this seems the first record of it, and J. T. Ferguson its inventor.

While Ferguson may have discovered the principle of the tumbling ring illusion independently, there were two toys that might have aided that discovery: the tumbling ring and Jacob's Ladder blocks. While some sources claim these novelties are ancient, published references and descriptions of them seem to exist no earlier than the last few decades of the nineteenth century. The tumbling ring puzzle is done with an even number of rings joined in an interlinked double chain. The tumbling ring illusion described by Ferguson seems to be a simplification of the double-chain puzzle. For a good explanation of this puzzle, see “La Chaine Magique” in Jules D'Hotel's Le Prestidigitation sans Bagages, Vol. 5, 1940, p. 155. W. W. Durbin recalled buying a set of the tumbling rings in a magic shop in 1879 (see Werner C. Dornfield's Trix and Chatter, 1921, p. 224).

The Jacob's Ladder block novelty is made of flat wooden blocks strung together by a system of parallel ribbons. A clear description of it can be found in Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions Including Trick Photography by Albert A. Hopkins, 1897, p. 399; and a responsible history of the toy and the piece of conjuring apparatus on which it is based is given in “The Yawning Mouth” by Volker Huber, Gibecière, Vol. 1 No. 1, Winter 2005, p. 37.