pages: unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf, 177
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unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf | 177 | THE UNMASKING OF ROBERT-HOUDIN Years ago when I introduced this trick in my per- formance, I called a young man on my stage and asked him to place the hand on the spindle. It would then re- volve and stop at any number named. But first I made him inform the audience the number he had chosen, Fig 19 . P o Figsy. of is n m to is 2 K 6 Tig 16 a a e XII a e of g g = i the IS The above diagram exposes the magic clock trick, as offered in the time of Hofrath von Eckartshausen, a German writer on magic in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Fig. 15 shows the clock in position for the trick, hung against the rear wall or 'drop." Gaily-colored ribbons hide thin leather tubes through which run two sets of stout silk thread or catgut, connecting with the hour and minute hands. The thread then passes through the two iron rings, p and o in Figures 17 and 19, which are screwed to the ceiling; thence to the hidden confederate, who manipulates the clock hands as the hour and minute are announced by magician or spectator. Fig. 16 shows the two faces of the clock, with the fine connecting rod around which the string is woudn to manipulate the hands. This mechanism is hidden by a flat brass band which encircles the edges of the two transparent faces. From Eckartshausen's "The Conjurer's Pocket," edition of 1791. which gave me time to fix the weight with my thumb. I then gave him the hand, but he was a skilled mechanic, and possibly knew the trick. Instead of holding the clock by the ring at the top, which was there for that [160] |