Egyptian Hall

A wunderkammer of treasures and curiosities from the private collections of magicians and conjurers.

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James Randi - Homeopathy, Quackery and Fraud

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James Randi's Autograph

James Randi (born August 7, 1928) (stage name The Amazing Randi) is a stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Randi began his career as a magician, but then became a debunker of the paranormal. He has written about the paranormal, skepticism, and the history of magic.

Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF).

He was a frequent guest on the The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and is occasionally featured on the television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

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Robert and Emiel

Robert and Emiel perform their two person mind-reading act at The International Magic Convention

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Julius and Agnes Zancig Autograph

Julius and Agnes Zancig were stage magicians and authors on occultism who performed a spectacularly successful two-person mentalism act during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Julius Zancig (1857–1929) – born Julius Jörgensen in Copenhagen, Denmark and his wife Agnes Claussen Jörgensen (c.1850s −1916); also born in Copenhagen, and known as Agnes Zancig, were the originators of the routine.

From their first professional appearance in the 1880s, until her death in 1916, the act consisted of Julius and his wife Agnes Zancig. Julius and Agnes were very close to one another in real life as well as on stage and were billed as "Two Minds With But a Single Thought." They had been childhood sweethearts in Denmark but grew apart, then met and fell in love again after both had emigrated to the United States. They were married in 1886. Theirs was the most popular and famous version of the act, and was successful for 30 years.

In 1921 a small (but by itself essentially useless) portion of the Zancigs' methodology was published by their friend and fellow mentalist-magician, Alexander the Crystal Seer. Writing in 1929, the year of Julius Zancig's death, the British magician Will Goldston also attempted to describe the code in some depth, but he did not reveal its entirety. In the 1940s Robert Nelson published a simple stage code which superficially resembled that of the Zancigs, but it did not permit the diversity of expression they had achieved.

To this day, the Zancig Code, also known as "Two Minds With But a Single Thought," is considered by many professional mentalists to be the most dauntingly complex two-person communication system of its type ever devised.

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David Willamson has issues with Murray...

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John Calvert a Century of Magic

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Ken Brooke Performing Although better known as a dealer of magical apparatus here's some old footage of Ken Brooke performing.  Commentary by the legendary Pat Page.

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Ken Brooke's Autograph

 Ken Brooke (1920-1983) was a magic dealer, a skilled demonstrator and a magical consultant.

Although his public recognition was not great, Ken Brooke had a profound influence on the greats of the UK magic scene, the likes of David Nixon, Tommy Cooper, Paul Daniels, David Berglas, Geoffrey Durham, and Wayne Dobson.

British magician and magic dealer does not do him justice. Ken Brooke wasn't just another magic dealer. When he sold someone an effect, many times it included his own instructions sheets, which reflected the real experiences of a performer who not only cared about how the tricks should be performed, but who also cared enough to provide information on the proper performance to those who bought his products.

Even for those who do not do particular effects that were sold by Ken Brooke, reading these instructions sheets provided real lessons in magic.

Invented a version of "Chase the Ace" (1955), "Fido" (a card trick), "Squircle"(1952), and may have invented "Professor Cheer's Comedy Rope" (at least he was the first magician on record who performed the trick at Glasgow, Scotland).

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Ali Bongo's Autograph

Ali Bongo (1929 - 2009) was a British comedy magician who has an act in which he is known as the Shriek of Araby.

Bongo performed his first magic trick at the age of 5, which he learned from the children’s page of The Times of India. He wrote many books on magic, many containing tricks of his own. As well as writing them he also illustrated them in his instantly recognizable style. He acquired the Ali Bongo name from a character he played in a national youth club pantomime as a teenager.

Bongo was one of the most popular stage magicians in the 1960s. At the height of his stage career he had his own BBC TV series, Ali Bongo’s Cartoon Carnival. He acted as magic consultant for many TV shows and musicals, including the Paul Daniels Magic Show for the BBC. He was also for many years associated with David Nixon, one of television’s earliest celebrities.

Ali traveled throughout the world as a consultant to many internationally famous magicians, including David Copperfield in Las Vegas.

At the beginning of February 2009, Bongo collapsed while giving a lecture in Paris. He was taken to hospital and, whilst there, suffered a stroke. Bongo was subsequently returned to the United Kingdom and cared for in St Thomas' Hospital, London, where he later died from complications arising from pneumonia.

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John Calvert's Autograph

John Calvert (born 1911) is an American magician who has performed on stage (including Broadway) for eight decades both in the United States and worldwide.

Calvert became fascinated with magic at age eight when his father took him to see the magician Howard Thurston perform in Cincinnati, Ohio. Shortly afterward, he performed his first trick for his Sunday school class - he made an egg appear from under another boy’s coat.

He made his initial magic tour when he was eighteen, performing in town halls in Kentucky backroad towns. His small troupe consisted of one assistant and “Gyp the Wonder Dog”. He returned home with a $2.65 profit.

Calvert continued performing magic during his Hollywood days. In the mid-1940s, he transported his show’s equipment and personnel worldwide in a Douglas DC-3 airliner, and in later years on yachts.

His biographer, William V. Rauscher, has called Calvert a “real-life Indiana Jones” because of his reputation for surviving dangerous circumstances in his travels. He is also a film actor who appeared in numerous movies. He was the subject of a biographical documentary entitled John Calvert – His Magic and Adventures. 

Calvert performed his magic act both on Broadway in New York City and at the London Palladium Theatre on his 100th birthday.

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Card Cheating - Luminous Readers

Of all the methods of card marking the cheaper versions of luminous readers utilising red lenses in glasses or contact lenses must be among the easiest to spot.  These glasses and decks are sold on the internet and seem to mainly originate from the Chinese mainland.

There are,however, better and more secretive methods of marking cards e.g.

Juice-marked cards - The marks are only visible when a person is trained to read the marks (no filtered sunglasses are required, but some practice is required to read the marks). Glasses can be used to make it easier to spot these marks.

Tintwork or shade - This technique uses a tint solution to mark cards, but the marking patterns vary depending upon the back design of the cards being marked.

Daub - A special paste is used by a player to mark someone else's deck, on the fly, while the cards are being used during a game and even while being watched. This eliminates the need to switch in a pre-marked deck of cards.

Juice dust - An advanced type of daub, it may be used to make an ad-hoc juiced deck. Like daub, it also allows a player to mark someone else's deck, on the fly, while being watched. The main advantages of juice dust are that it will not dull the finish of the cards and that it works on both paper and 100% plastic playing cards.

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Roy Walton's Autograph

Roy Walton (born 1932 in London) is a card magic expert from England who currently lives and works in Scotland.  First interested in magic at the age of eight, Roy is a world-recognized card magician creating hundreds of card effects, including perhaps his most famous effect, Card Warp. He has mentored numerous Scottish magicians including Jerry Sadowitz and Peter Duffie.

Many of Walton's pamphlets and other works have been collected in two books on card magic currently published by Lewis Davenport Ltd. of London, and he continues to contribute to several English language magazines on card magic.

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Robert Harbin performs The Zig-Zag Girl

...and introduced by the fantastic Geoffrey Durham, British comedy magician and actor who was known for many years as 'the Great Soprendo'.

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Robert Harbin's Autograph

Robert Harbin (1909-1978) was a British magician and writer born Edward Richard Charles Williams in Balfour, South Africa. He is noted as the inventor of a number of classic illusions, including the Zig Zag Girl.

Much of his inventive genius was put into written form and he is known as one of the most prodigious authors on the subject of magical effects. However, although Harbin was brilliantly creative in the field of magic he was not a particularly good writer and his friend and associate Eric Lewis has stated that many of Harbin's titles were ghost written for him.

In about 1952 Harbin appeared in a minor part as a magician in the film The Limping Man, produced by Cy Endfield. In 1953, Harbin and a friend of Endfield's, Gershon Legman, discovered a common interest in the Japanese art of paper-folding. Harbin wrote many books on the subject, beginning with Paper Magic (illustrated by the young art student, the Australian Rolf Harris who in the middle of the project, caught the origami idea and contributed several intricate models himself) in 1965, and was the first President of the British Origami Society. He was the first Westerner to use the word origami for this art-form. He also presented a series of origami programs for ITV in its "Look-In" shows for children in the 1970s.

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Card Punch or Pegger

Usually these are a well-made brass device used to punch a tiny impression in an inconspicuous spot on a card which the dealer could then detect as he dealt the cards.  There were first used by card cheats and came to the attention of magicians through the efforts of Walter Scott the "Phantom of the Card Table".   There is very little in magic literature that goes into any great depth on the use of the punch and the effects that can be constructed.  The majority of information I've seen on the punch is from Ed Marlo.  "Marlo in Spades" has a couple of effects and the Marlo Magazine has a few items that utilise the punch.  The other stand out text is "The Punch Letters" by Ray Grismer, published by Jeff Busby well worth reading if you plan to use a punch at all.  For a great insight into what is possible with the punch and a more easily obtainable book check out "Raw Deal" by Darwin Ortiz from "Scams and Fantasies".  

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A Prism or "Two-Shoe"

With the introduction of the dealing shoe it was thought that the majority of "artifice" would be impossible to commit.  However, enterprising grifters had soon come up with the Prism Shoe, a gaffed dealing shoe allowing the dealer to peek the top card and if necessary to hold it back for a playing confederate's hand.

Despite the Prism shoe making high prices when they do infrequently come up for sale, I'm unconvinced of the suitability of the show for actually cheating in a game. The dealer has to alter the style of the deal to be deceptive and I'm not sure it would go unnoticed by the sharper players.  For a true cheating shoe I think you'd need a "Rough & Smooth Shoe" which doesn't rely on the dealer having to shift to a suspicious method.