| Title | Svengali Deck |
| People | Burling Hull |
| Year | 1909 |
| Source | "The Edison of Magic and His Incredible Creations" by Burling "Volta" Hull, published by Samuel Patrick Smith, 1977. "Expert at the Pitch Table" (1993?) video tape. "Encyclopedia of Card Tricks" deals in chapter 13 exclusively with the Svengali deck. |
| Description | |
| Details | Hull invented the Svengali deck when he was 16 (1905) as a forcing deck for magicians and copyrighted it in 1909. [Told by Harvey Turner who used to visit Hull in Florida.] The first time the svengali deck showed up as a pitch for "lay" people was the 1939 New York Worlds Fair. Several magicians started out with a svengali deck from some fast talking pitchman. Among them Channing Pollock and Mike Rogers. Millions of decks have sold throughout the years. The name Svengali was coined by Herman Hanson at that time employed by W. D. Leroy a Boston magic dealer. Hull called it "Improved Cards Mysterious". The book "The Edison of Magic and His Incredible Creations" by Burling "Volta" Hull, published by Samuel Patrick Smith in 1977 contains a copy of the copyright for "Improved Cards Mysterious" which is described in a flyer produced by Hull as having the same arrangement as what we know now as the Svengali Deck. In North America the man who influenced the pitch the most was Dave Walker. He learned it from Micky Mc'Dougall. Walker altered the pitch a bit and developed it to what it is today. He trained many people and thus developed sort of a school for the svengali pitch. In Britain the the story was somewhat different. A Canadian pitchman by the name of Joe Stuthard went to England and started the pitch there. It was further developed by Ron McMillan, the well known British magic dealer. Mark Lewis continued to develop the pitch further over the years. The end result being two different pitches in America and England. A forerunner to the Svengali deck was suggested in 1888 using Corner Shorted cards. Later improvements were made to the Svengali deck, for example the Trilby deck, created by Joe Stuthard. Instead of alternate cards being long and short, alternate cards are bevel cut to the left and to the right. That gives two advantages - a double lift to show the key card is facilitated, and a riffle or similar display to show all key cards (if one should wish to do that)doesn't require turning the deck round. The Trilby Deck is an End Stripper Deck, plus 24 key identical key cards that are bevelled the opposite way. The Bi-Co Trilby Deck is the Trilby Deck plus a further 24 cards with a different colour back and bevelled the opposite way. |
| Researched by | Don Driver, Jack Poulter, Mark Lewis, Chris Wasshuber, Dave Le Fevre |
| Category | gimmick |
| Subcategory | cards |