Another Thursday, another dose of curious stuff. Here is a strange tale combining magic, a trip to Paris, and some remarkable photographs.
In the early 1890s, French scientist Alfred Binet teamed up with several magicians (including sleight of hand expert Edouard-Joseph Raynaly) and photographer Georges Demeny to discover how magic fooled the mind. Demeny had helped to create an early type of film camera and was using it to analyse fast movements by reducing them to a series of rapidly taken still photographs. His clockwork camera could move 24 frames past a lens at the rate of one every tenth of a second. Publishing the results in an 1894 article, Binet describes how the images removed the magician’s patter and speed of movement, and so exposed the illusions. The photographs were not reproduced in Binet’s article, but it did contain a curious note explaining that they were ‘stored in laboratory records.’
I came across Binet’s article when I was writing my PhD on magic. A few years later, I decided to search for the missing images. I first contacted an expert on early film, Professor Marta Braun (Toronto Metropolitan University). Marta wasn’t aware of the images, but suggested that I reach out to an archivist at the French National Library named Laurent Mannoni. After several weeks of discussions and searching, Laurent discovered 3 sets of Binet’s images in the archive. I headed to Paris!
Once in the archive, Laurent led me into a darkened room filled with amazing objects, including Demeny’s camera, apparatus from the famous French magician Robert-Houdin and the 3 sets of images! These images were breath-taking and involved Raynaly springing cards between his hands (11 images), changing one playing card into another (11 images) and making a ball vanish (24 images). Laurent kindly allowed me to make digital copies of the photographs. On the train back to the UK, a thought occurred to me. If I were to present each set of images in rapid succession, I could recreate Raynaly’s performance from over a century ago! So that’s what I did and here is one of the films.
The film shows Raynaly dropping the ball from one hand to another, passing back into his upper hand and then the ball vanishing. Don’t blink or you will miss it! Historians often cite 1896 footage of British magician David Devant as the earliest film of a conjurer, but Demeny’s film predates Devant’s footage by at least two years. I have shown the Raynaly film at many conferences and conventions, and he always receives a much-deserved round of applause!
So, there you have it. A magical detective story borne of curiosity and luck, that ended up uncovering the world’s earliest film of a magician. What do you think? It’s easy to imagine none of this happening. What if the article hadn’t stuck in my mind. Or Maria hadn’t been as helpful? Or Laurent hadn’t been as generous? But I am glad that it did.
Further reading:
Binet, A. (1894). Psychology of prestidigitation. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (pp.555–571). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Lachapelle S. (2008). From the stage to the laboratory: magicians, psychologists, and the science of illusion. Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, 44(4), 319–334. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.20327
Thomas, C., & Didierjean, A. (2016). Scientific Study of Magic: Binet’s Pioneering Approach Based on Observations and Chronophotography. The American journal of psychology, 129, 313–326. https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.129.3.0313
All images except Binet, copyright Richard Wiseman
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