Miracle Mongers and Their Methods: A Complete Exposé of the Modus Operandi of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc.Houdini, Harry
History
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods: A Complete Exposé of the Modus Operandi of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc.
Houdini, Harry
Magic tricks -- History; Magicians -- Biography
We propose to point out here a certain number of such artifices and to
describe a few of the experiments, utilizing for this purpose the data
furnished by Mr. Perry, as well as those resulting from our own
observations.
One of the experiments consists in having a man or several men hold a
cane or a billiard cue horizontally above the head, as shown in Fig. 1.
On pushing with one hand, the girl forces back two or three men, who,
in unstable equilibrium and under the oblique action of the thrust
exerted, are obliged to fall back. This first experiment is so
elementary and infantile that it is not necessary to dwell upon it. In
order to show the relative sizes of the persons, the artist has
supposed the little girl to be standing on a platform in the first
experiment, but in the experiment that we witnessed this platform was
rendered useless by the fact that the girl who performed them was of
sufficient height to reach the cue by extending her arms and standing
on tiptoes.
Next we have a second and more complex experiment, less easily
explained at first sight.
Two men (Fig. 2) take a stick about three feet in length, and are asked
to hold it firmly in a vertical position. The girl places her hand
against the lower end of the stick, in the position shown, and the two
men are invited to make the latter slide vertically in the girl's hand,
which they are unable to do, in spite of their conscientious and
oft-repeated attempts.
Mr. Perry explains this exercise as follows: The men are requested to
place themselves parallel to each other, and the girl, who stands
opposite them, places the palm of her hand against the stick and turned
toward her. She takes care to place her hand as far as possible from
the hands of the two men, so as to give herself a certain leverage.
She then begins to slide her hand along the stick, gently at first, and
then with an increasing pressure, as if she wished to better the
contact between the stick and her hand. She thus moves it from the
perpendicular and asks the two men to hold it in a vertical position.
This they do under very disadvantageous conditions, seeing the
difference in the length of the arms of the lever. The stress exerted
by the girl is very feeble, because, on the one hand, she has the lever
arm to herself, and, on the other, the action upon her lever arm is a
simple traction. When she feels that the pressure exerted is great
enough, she directs the two men to exert a vertical stress strong
enough to cause the stick to descend. They then imagine that they are
exerting a VERTICAL stress, while in reality their stresses are
HORIZONTAL and tend to keep the stick in a vertical position in order
to react against the pressure exerted at the lower end of the stick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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