When it is realized that a transposition effect is simply the vanish of something at one place and its reappearance at another location, the fundamental methods of accomplishing it are almost obvious.
If we desire to give the appearance of an object being mysteriously transposed from one place to another, there are only two possible courses. Two apparently identical objects are used, the first being vanished and the second being caused to appear. Or the subject itself is secretly conveyed from one place to the other.
Transpositions are, in fact, usually simply combinations of the two effects we have already
thoroughly discussed. It is essential that the two or more necessary portions of the effect each take place at a different location.
Where one object seems to leave one location and appears to travel invisibly and mysteriously to another place, you have a simple transposition. Where two different objects are each in two different locations and they seem to trade places in some unexplainable manner, each with the other, you have a compound transposition. This is true, also, if more than two things exchange places.
As is the case with vanishes and appearances, these effects may take place out in the open and uncovered, or beneath or within or behind something. Things, people or animals may be involved in any type of assortment. The effect may take place instantaneously or gradually.
I choose to interpret the trick of multi-position, where an object is shown to be in several places at once, as one of rapid transposition. This is because the object is shown to be in several places successively, rather than simultaneously—no matter how rapid the succession of revelations. Some time—however short—must elapse, as it is impossible to show the object to be in several places at once. Otherwise the result would be multiple objects.
Now let's try to find a familiar example of a transposition being accomplished through the use of secret hiding places, both at the place of disappearance and at the location of the reappearance.
We could do worse than select The Vanishing Alarm Clock. In the conventional apparatus the items used are an alarm clock equipped with a clip at its base, a foulard into which is built a form to simulate the clock, a tray with flat band made to secure the clock to the bottom of the tray, and a slender metal stand with an automatic ringing mechanism in the base.
With this vanishing alarm clock we shall combine The Reappearing Alarm Clock, using the conventional method. This is simply a large frame on a pedestal. The background within the frame is black. It is equipped with a revolving panel, which when released, will make a swift half—turn, bringing the rear of the panel, covered with similar material, to the front. The duplicate clock is affixed to the rear of the panel. The device is also equipped with a ringing mechanism which will simulate the ringing of the alarm clock when the panel with the clock attached is in appearing position, facing the audience.
While on the subject of duplicates it might be mentioned that most, but not all, transpositions employ the use of duplicate objects.
The first principle under both vanish and appearance is the taking from or putting into a secret hiding place while attention is directed elsewhere. Now how can these conditions be met with the combined alarm clock tricks?
In performing the vanishing alarm clock trick, the clock is placed on the tray. In being placed upon the tray the clip in the bottom of the clock is engaged into the fiat band on the tray. This permits the tray to be tilted, while the clock is attached to it, without the clock falling.
After the clock is placed on the tray it is covered with the foulard. Then, apparently taking the clock from the tray, still covered, it is hung, covered, upon the stand. In the meantime, the form built into the foulard has simulated the clock. But in the act of lifting the foulard from the tray, the latter is tilted backward away from the audience. The clock, of course, is clinging to the tray and is concealed behind it. Here the tray becomes the secret hiding place.
In the conventional method an assistant carries the tray away. Or it may be stood on edge, leaning against something.
In a special version I evolved, I used a trap-top table. It was arranged in such a way that it would open to receive the clock as I laid the tray face down upon the table. Later the clock could be released and would fall into the trap, the door closing behind it. This permitted the tray to be picked up afterwards.
However, we have disposed of the clock in a secret hiding place while attention was directed elsewhere. The attention, in this case is directed at the apparent clock hanging beneath the foulard, from the hook of the stand.
The ringing mechanism in the stand is started. The magician whisks the foulard from the stand. The ringing stops as though the clock had vanished in midair.
A split second later the ringing is heard coming from the stand at the opposite side of the stage. The clock has apparently flown there invisibly.
Actually, while attention was on the vanish, the panel in the reappearing stand revolved, bringing the duplicate from its secret siding place. Thus all conditions, both for the vanish and the
appearance, have been met. Both effects were accomplished by utilizing the secret hiding place while attention was directed elsewhere. I am aware that the clock vanish might also be called conveying behind an accessory. But until the tray is moved the clock is simply hidden behind it.
Thus the tray is a simple hiding place unless we include the movement to the ultimate hiding place.
But let's give some general attention to transpositions and their methods without too much emphasis upon the distinctions between the various basic principles.
The Jumping Peg and Paddle trick is certainly a transposition. It is accomplished by changing the proximate surroundings without moving the object. This gives the appearance of a transposition without any movement having taken place at all. Of course, the method of changing the nearby surroundings is accomplished through already familiar expedients. (One of two compartments, either of which may become secret.)
A secret exchange of containers is utilized for one Twentieth Century method. Two handkerchiefs are tied together and rolled up, after which they are placed in a small whiskey glass. Later this whiskey glass is exchanged for a duplicate glass containing a duplicate set of handkerchiefs, between which has been tied the usual duplicate flag. The original vanish of the flag may be accomplished through several of the methods noted. Particularly, in this case, vanishes through pure sleight-of-hand, the finger tip, the pull and others of similar ilk are suitable.
We encounter the flap principle under this classification when The Card Frame is utilized as a transposition. The swinging or sliding flap, also, is utilized to carry the identity of the opposite object. This is adapted especially for cards when it is desired to transpose their identities, as, for example, a Nine of Hearts and a Queen of Spades changing places. Specific instances are Find the Queen, in both the card and cube versions.
But the flap isn't necessary. Any method of changing the identities of the objects used, even to having a card printed with one face on one side and another on the other, will do under the proper conditions.
Other expedients such as the iris may be utilized in special cases. The Menetehel Pack illustrates a much-used idea. Here a duplicate in a new location is revealed as the original. And in this case particularly the performer seldom bothers to reveal that the original is gone. However, when a card is selected from such a pack, the original may be destroyed or vanished prior to the revelation of the duplicate.
Employed in the transposition of a marked egg from a tumbler to the hand, or vice versa, the bottomless glass supplies an example of the secret passageway principle being applied to a transposition effect. Of course, the secret passageway is the unsuspected absence of the glass bottom.
But there are many other indirect applications of this method. A trick that Tom Sellers developed from a Chinese string rack called The Passe-Passe Ribbons, is an illustration. Two ribbons, say one black and one white, are mounted at either end of two lengths of bamboo. Sliding up and down on
the ribbons, between the two sticks between which the ribbons are stretched, is a third length of bamboo. Holding the device suspended from one hand, the black ribbon is at the left with the white, naturally, on the right. The sliding section of bamboo is at the bottom. By sliding this stick to the top, the black seems to move to the right side whereas the white moves to the left. Actually, the sliding length of bamboo is hollow. The black ribbon is secured to the top stick on the left side. It enters the sliding section through a hole on the left side, crosses to the right side within the hollow section of the stick and emerges on the right side from whence it drops to a fastening on the right side of the bottom stick. The white ribbon traverses an opposite course. Thus, with the sliding stick down, the black ribbon is at the left. When the sliding section is lifted, the black is on the right.
Obviously, the sliding section supplies a secret passageway.
The Passe-Passe Bottle and Glass trick, a compound transposition, employs duplicate shell bottles and goblets or tumblers which will fit within the shells. The nested bottle shells, fitting over and concealing a duplicate glass, pass for the original bottle. In the act of showing that the covering cylinders fit the bottle, or through some other stratagem, one of the shell bottles—the outside one—
is stolen within one cylinder. This cylinder is used to cover the original glass. After the shell has been stolen, all that is necessary to do is to release the first shell, thus concealing the original glass, allowing the shell to be seen as the bottle. When the other cylinder is picked up the second shell is carried away with it, revealing the duplicate glass. Thus, they seem to have changed places.
But the incidental features, refining this trick, reveal strikingly the nature of true invention.
The hole in the back of the shells, allowing the magician's finger to hold the glass beneath the shell bottle when it is picked up, was probably the first refinement. Originally, and I had such a set, the bottle could not be picked up in front of the audience.
Then someone added a partition just beneath the neck of the innermost shell. This allowed wine or other liquid to be poured from the bottle. But, as yet, the transposition couldn't be accomplished with liquid in the tumbler. This was because a corresponding amount of liquid, which would be necessary in the duplicate tumbler, would overflow and come out the bottom of the shell bottle, when the liquid was poured into the original glass.
Someone got around this difficulty by building the innermost bottle in such a manner that the magician would apparently pour half a glass of liquid back in the bottle. Really, a separate pipe into which it was poured led through the bottom in the liquid container and into the glass below.
At length the more improved version was evolved. This retained the original liquid compartment.
But in addition there was a short length of tubing inserted in the bottom. In the mouth of this tube was a small cork. A wire plunger led from the cork to just inside the mouth of the inner shell. By pushing this plunger, the liquid in the container would run into the duplicate glass. In use, exactly double the amount of liquid to be poured into the original glass was placed in the container. The proper amount was poured into the visible glass. When the bottle was replaced on the table, the plunger was pushed and a similar amount flowed into the concealed duplicate.
As in most well developed methods, many basic principles are involved in the final refined transposition. Here we may recognize the use of shells, the use of duplicates, the use of the stratagem of carrying away an object beneath a container, the use of disguise—when we disguise the reason for covering the nested shells with the cylinders—and several others, employed in varying ways and for devious necessary complications.
That is why it is almost impossible to classify any single trick into any single method classification.
Complication of principles, particularly with mechanical magic, seems to complicate solution of method.
The Die Box Trick employs the use of a shell in a different manner. The die originally seen consists of the solid die and a four-sided shell matching it. The problem, of course, is to cause the die to pass apparently from the die box into a hat. Since the hat is usually shown empty in the beginning, it is necessary to develop a method for loading the duplicate. So the nested die and shell are shown as one. Using a suitable pretext the die is placed in the hat momentarily. Afterwards the die is left behind and the shell is brought out.
While the exact method of evanishment may be varied, although in The Die Box Trick the general procedure is quite fixed, the transposition feature is possible only through loading the die while disguising the action as something else. Here the duplicate is concealed within the shell and is conveyed to the hat while concealed within the shell.
This effect may be accomplished, as is apparent, by any other combinations of principles that will lend themselves to the objects used. Exactly the same general effect may be accomplished by utilizing the secret compartment principle applied to both the die box and the hat. Into the hat could be put a false top that would provide a secret compartment sufficient in size to hide the duplicate die. And the die box could be altered somewhat in shape and size to provide a secret compartment into which the original die might be concealed. Or both dice might be collapsible. Or the vanish might be accomplished by means of some type of pull, which would carry the die away. And the appearance in the hat might be made possible through loading the hat under cover of a handkerchief that might be spread over it, or any other combination of basic principles.
Or another performer might prefer to utilize the exact basic principles, but instead of the die—as a random example—he might use a package of cigarettes, or a pack of cards. Either may be utilized with the die box idea, exactly.
Wright and Larsen developed a pocket trick that used the shell for a transposition effect, but in a different way. The trick is called Button Button. The performer shows a card upon which are sewn three black buttons. In his hands, he holds a red button. He causes the middle black button to leave the card and appear in his bands, while the red button is found affixed to the cards between the two black buttons.
Originally, a shell representing a black button is covering a red button that is sewn to the card between the two black buttons. The card thus appears to have three black buttons. In turning the card back towards audience, the performer allows the black shell to fall into his hand. He slips the black shell over the red button he holds. The red button in his hands thus seems to have changed to a black one. Of course, when the card is turned towards the audience the middle button is seen to be red.
The Pea and Shell Game very clearly illustrates the application of conveying the article to be changed from one location to another, conveying it within or behind something. In the act of sliding the shells about the pea is stolen from beneath the shell under which it was originally placed. It is conveyed, concealed by the fingers, to the shell under which the performer desires it to be seen.
Many Cups and Balls moves are similar.
Using the same principles but utilizing different objects could evolve an entirely new trick. White sponge rubber squares could be called "cubes of sugar" and handle-less Chinese teacups could be used in place of the shells or the conventional cups.
As in the case of the die box trick, other principles of appearance and evanishment could be applied to achieve exactly the same effect.
Petrie-Lewis Manufacturing Company makes a wand called The Vanishing and Reproducing Wand. By means of it the magician may accomplish the transposition of a silk handkerchief from one paper cone to another. The wand is used to assist in the formation of the two cones. In forming
the first cone, a center rod that comes from the inside of the hollow wand is dropped into the cone.
The handkerchief is spread over the mouth of the cone. Then it is pushed within by means of the wand. But the wand really goes over the center rod. And the handkerchief is pushed within the wand.
Then, in forming the second cone, the wand is turned end for end and is again used to make it. The magician clips a removable tip of the wand through the paper. This brings the handkerchief from the wand into the paper cone. Thus the transposition is accomplished.
Exactly the same effect may be achieved by employing the principle of the secret compartment instead of the method of conveying within an accessory. Two double paper cones could be used, each with a secret pocket, with duplicate handkerchiefs.
In The Three Card Monte Trick the transposition is made possible by apparently placing the object to be changed in one location while it seems to have been placed in another. This is made possible by the move, well-known by most magicians, by means of which another card, instead of the indicated one, is placed in one place while the principal card is actually put in the location to which
In The Three Card Monte Trick the transposition is made possible by apparently placing the object to be changed in one location while it seems to have been placed in another. This is made possible by the move, well-known by most magicians, by means of which another card, instead of the indicated one, is placed in one place while the principal card is actually put in the location to which