The Mark Twain stack is a Si Stebbins stack with a four-apart sequence in SHoCkeD order. The first known publication to publish the stepping-by-four sequence was in The Magic Wand, May 1917, p. 150. It was later published more thoroughly in the February 1935 issue of Modern Mechanix and Inventions magazine. This is a reproduction of this article.
The Mark Twain stack, also called the Riverboat stack (see, for example, Magic Card System), due to the abundant gambling on Mississippi riverboats, gets its name from the practice on these riverboats of frequently having to measure the water depth. If it was two marks, pronounced 'mark twain', it was ok.
1st edition 1935; PDF 4 pages.
word count: 1183 which is equivalent to 4 standard pages of text
