Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Teller Jim Steinmeyeramazon.com
Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
That's the value of a great bit of magic. It offers the pleasure of something plain and ordinary unexpectedly elevated to a marvel. It's a redemptive feeling,
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
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Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
In books of tricks, the recipe is specific-here's the effect and here's the method-implying that executing and concealing the secret is always the ultimate goal of the exercise.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Houdini compensated by attempting to portray his performance of magic as a challenge, force-feeding the mechanical wonders to the audience with great dollops ofhis personality. Watching him play the part of an elegant conjurer was a bit like watching a wrestler play the violin.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
In his "Soiree Fantastique," Robert-Houdin's effect was presented as a magical box that could become heavy or light at will and thus protect itself from thieves. It was accomplished with a metal-lined box and an electromagnet beneath the stage-in the 1840s such magnets were little understood by the general public and not likely to be susp
... See moreTeller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Barely a year after Psycho's premiere, Dr. W. Pole, a writer on games and card table strategy, had noticed the patent and quickly explained in McMillain's Magazine how Psycho could be controlled by air pressure through the cylinder.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Despite their innovations and contributions to the world of conjuring, the Davenports indulged in a typical mistake of many amateur magicians, by doing "too much" simply because they could, inadvertently violating the illusion they wished to create.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Even Devant's modern style-eliminating tricky-looking apparatus -could be taken to an extreme. One magician and writer glorified the good old days when stages looked colorful and apparatus were built specifically to look exotic and intriguing: