Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Square Circle Production

Louis S. Histed is usually given credit for the invention of this production apparatus. Two related productions by him are documented in Masterpieces of Magic, Vol. 1 by Douglas Craggs, 1946: "The Milk Trick", p. 42, and "The Chinese Pagoda", p. 53. The next year, Histed published another version, "The Crystal Cylinder", in The Magic of Louis S. Histed, 1947. p. 91. There he claimed he invented the earliest of these “Square Circle” tricks, “The Milk Trick”, “round about 1930.” The Square Circle Production in its common form has a simplified construction but uses a Black-Art load chamber in the same manner employed by Histed in his tricks.

However, David Bamberg claims that Theo (Okito), his father, invented an early version for Madame Herrmann to produce a rose bush from a cone. See Bamberg's Illusion Show, 1991, p. 52.

Sometime after the now-standard Square Circle Production had developed from Histed's tricks, someone devised the idea of putting screen or mesh over the front window in the outer box. This, as David Bamberg observed, beat the overhead lighting problems from which the Okito design suffered.