Sublime

I’m not interested in deceiving people.

When Steinmeyer writes about the theater a century ago, he speaks as one who's met modern versions of the characters, who's even reconstructed their tricks onstage. So when, for example, he describes David Devant's Mascot Moth (which Steinmeyer reproduced in Doug Henning's Merlin),

His specialty was convincing each person that they had witnessed a near catastrophe.

it wasn’t until I saw a series of clips of Orson performing stage illusions on one of Walt’s VHS tapes that I realized he was an accomplished conjuror.

Jean Robert-Houdin was famous for the opinion that a magician is actually just "an actor playing the part of a magician."

He also performed Unshuffled, an effect he created that bowled over Penn & Teller on their television show Penn & Teller: Fool Us. The deck’s edge is drawn on with black marker and, after shuffling a few times, the scribbles magically transform into letters that spell out the spectator’s chosen card. He also performed Namerology, my favorite effect

The public never heard the name Dircksian Phantasmagoria. Dircks happily accepted five hundred pounds for the idea and waived any future royalties, merely asking that his name be attached to the invention.