I recently came across a debate over the significance of Charles T. Jordan's contributions to magic. Wanting to share my thoughts, without being able to find the original thread, I figured I'd start this thread to pay some tribute and, I hope, learn more about this prolific figure.

What I know of Charles Jordan, I mostly learned from many numerous inclusions in Encyclopedia of Card Tricks (Hugard), Thirty Card Mysteries (Jordan), and Collected Tricks (Fulves). One of my favorite effects, though mostly for sentimental reasons, is Diabolical Transposition. Where his effects were/are clever, his most significant contributions seem to be his numerous sleights and observations. To name a few: the Jordan Count (described in Thirty Card Mysteries [unnamed]), a precursor to the Versa/Throw Switch (described in Collected Tricks [unnamed]), the Interlocking Chain Principle (described in Greater Magic), and the observation that overhand shuffles reverse groups of cards. These sleights and principles have been used as the basis of some wonderful and very well-known effects.

What are your favorite Charles Jordan contributions?

Andrew

Gosh, my freakin memory! Somewhere out there, I can't remember where, there's a very interesting article about who Jordan was, and whether he really contributed the effects sold under his name. I remember it referenced Jordan as being some kind of professional puzzle solver or something like that. Does that ring a bell for anyone?

Magical Mathematics (Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham) includes a very nice write-up on Jordan in its 10th chapter: Stars of Mathematical Magic (And Some of the Best Tricks in the Book). The write-up speaks of his puzzle solving endeavors and concludes with an extremely complimentary quote from Stewart James, "To me, Jordan was the greatest idea man that card magic has produced." (On an unrelated note, I owe a great debt of gratitude to one of today's greatest magicians and magical innovators for recently bringing Stewart James to my attention.)

According to MagicPedia, The Bat, No. 9 included a memorial the year of his death (1944).

Andrew

Karl Fulves actually published 3 books on Charles Jordan's magic.

1st - The easy to obtain Dover publication, "Charles Jordan's Best Card Tricks"

2nd - Karl also self published a huge book that was filled with Jordan's card magic and non card magic called, "Charles T. Jordan Collected Tricks"

3rd - Karl published a book of his own material that was inspired by Jordan's thinking called, "After Jordan"

Yes it was the Diaconis book, Andrew. Thanks for jogging my memory! The Jordan-inspired material in there concerning the effects of riffle shuffling was very intriguing.

I managed to track down two articles from The Bat (No. 9): Jordan Search Leads to Grave and Favorite Jordan Tricks. The articles describe Jordan as a profound magical innovator, a gifted solver of puzzles, a successful investor in crystal radios, and a fiction writer. Additionally, the article describes that Jordan went "magic crazy" after seeing a live performance by Harry Kellar and that Jordan maintained a friendship with the well-known Arthur Buckley (and others).

Andrew

Richard Kaufman had a 2 part series on Charles Jordan in MAGIC magazine in the 90's.

The issues also included some rare/unpublished Charles Jordan effects as well.

Kaufman was arguing that Jordan was a pseudonym for T. Nelson Downs.

Personally - I am a huge fan of Charles Jordan. A wonderful thinker far ahead of his time. You can still fool magicians with most of the stuff he came up with 100 years ago. I think he was the most creative card thinker in the history of magic. His ideas were that revolutionary for its day.

The large Stewart James books is a another good source for reading about Charles Jordan as well.

Lastly - check out this interesting article:

http://www.conjuringcredits.com/doku.php......troversy

All the best,

Joe Mckay

I'll have to go read the Kaufman articles, but my first reaction is that T. Nelson Downs would fully desire any credit he had coming to him.

I definitely agree, Tim!

From what I know of T. Nelson Downs (my good friend, the late Faucett Ross, knew Downs, and told me a lot about Downs. --and, I was able to visit Downs' nephew when I played the school in Montour, Iowa, in the early '70s, T.Nelson, would definitely have desired any credit that he had coming!!!

In the January 1972 issue of _Linking Ring_, Henry Hay tells a great story about when he was 13 years old and visited Downs, arriving at Downs's home "in full Turk costume." Hay dedicated the In Memoriam of _The Amateur Magician's Handbook" to Downs, calling Downs "The Great Man of my boyhood."

----- Amado "Sonny" Narvaez