Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Sachs's and Sack's Dice Routine

The earliest publication so far discovered for the Paddle Move applied to dice appears in Richard and Delion's Le Magicien des Salons, 1856, p. 264. The trick, in an unacknowledged translation, appeared three years later in Dick and Fitzgerald's The Secret Out, 1859. See "The Dice" (page number varies with editions). The trick became popularly known as “The Sachs Dice Trick” because of its appearance in Edwin Sachs's Sleight of Hand, 1877, there titled “Changing Dice”, p. 81 of the second edition.

Dr. Sack later improved the logic of the sequence of changes given by Sachs by assuring that the opposite sides shown added to seven. The Sack routine was published in The Phoenix, No. 152, June 18 1948, p. 615. According to Tim Trono in Genii, Vol. 65 No. 12, Dec. 2002, p. 76, Melvyn Burkhart, in 1933, was the first to develop a quarter-turn handling with giant dice.