The modern magician, as we would think of them, originated in the mid-19th century. If I were to ask you to describe a wizard, you would most likely say top hat, tailcoat, and magic wand. Well, this notion of a magician was first demonstrated by none other than Herrmann the Great, Alexander Herrmann (1844-1896). He was a French magician who toured with his family billed as “The First Family of Magic”.

Although Herrmann was the archetypal magician, he was not the first, and magic owes much to the fantastic works of Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin (1805-1871). Trained as a watchmaker, Robert-Houdin used his talents to build mechanical contraptions that moved in such a way as to convince audiences that they were alive. Also French, he opened his own theater of magic in the mid-1840s in central Paris. Here he displayed mechanical figures of himself, such as an automaton performing the cup and balls trick (see our site) and songbirds. His most famous creation was a figure that could write and draw; this creation was displayed to none other than King Louis Philippe and was eventually sold to PT Barnum.

Not to be outdone, the British produced possibly the first magician to fully exploit the stage in the form of JN Maskelyn. He opened his own theater on Piccadilly in London in 1873, here they began to use mechanical effects built into the stage to produce levitation tricks and trapdoors to create disappearances. He was also the first to realize that an audience sitting below stage height had a very different perspective of the stage and that this could be used to great effect with optical illusions.

Without a doubt the best known magician of modern times has to be the legendary Harry Houdini. Born Ehrich Weiss in 1874, he became one of the most daring escapists of modern times. Not that the word escapist was invented until after Houdini’s death in 1926. Taking his stage name in homage to the aforementioned French watchmaker, Houdini used a combination of lockpicking and the ability to escape from straitjackets combined with fake equipment. and “plants” in the audience. Houdini’s true skill lay in his marketing skills and his gift for manipulating the media. He truly became the first magical superstar and when we look at some of the self-promotions used by illusionists today, you can almost hear Harry looking down and laughing because he’d seen it, he’d done it and he’d gotten the t-shirt.

Houdini used to challenge the people of the city in which he performed with the slogan of increasingly extreme escapes. This saw him escaping not only from his famous milkmaid, but also from boxes full of iron thrown into a river, riveted kettles, and bags of mail. In the first example of cross-marketing by a modern artist, he, too, escaped his beer-filled milk crate by local brewers. Not unlike our modern Pepsi or Coors sponsored artists, just 100 years ahead of their time. Yes, I admit it, I am a die-hard fan. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend a visit to the Houdini museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania.