In 1906, Horace Goldin filed two patents that diagrammed apparatus for “Producing Stage Illusions.” One patent was for human-sized cannon. A lady assistant would be loaded inside and then apparently fired out of it, where she disappeared. An accompanying Goldin patent was for a set of three nested trunks, where the lady reappeared. Despite Goldin’s long reputation as the inventor of magic’s great stage illusions, recent research suggests many of his greatest creations were borrowed or stolen from other magicians. Even the cannon and trunk trick—you have to admit—was a bigger version of the favorite trick where a borrowed finger ring was fired from a pistol and ended up inside a nested set of small wooden boxes.
