Card Caliper (Spielkarten – Schieblehre “Latoni”) by Tony Lackner, Alexander de Cova

Effect: Dear Magic Friend,

What you are now holding in your hands is a trick that was born out of necessity. While working in Switzerland for an extended period I had to entertain spectators in the evenings in a “magic bar”. Often spectators would ask me “how did you do that” and I tired not having a great answer to this problem. I started for a trick which would enable me to provide an entertaining and magical answer.

In my search thru catalogues I uncovered Patrick Page’s “card ruler” which was offered by Supreme Magic of England at the time. It was a plastic ruler that had card symbols printed on it and a spectator could measure his way to a selected card. It was necessary to force a card (and there was only one or two cards that could be forced). Nice was that the spectator could measure himself.

The trick worked well and entertained so it was what I was looking for with one exception….I did not like the look of the ruler, it looked more like a toy than the real thing. I started to attach moving arms to the ruler so it looked more like a caliper. Fast forward…one evening I showed the trick at a magic club meeting in Munich and it went over well, except for the fact that one of Germany’s most respected magic builders was present and he did not think my ruler with moving arms looked professional. It bothered him so much that he took the time to modify a real caliper into a magical instrument.

The resulting prop is now in your hands and I am very proud of it. Not only because my idea came to live but more importantly because it resulted in a strong magic effect that is convincing to lay audiences. I also like the fact that it only adds very little for me to carry since I can use the deck of  cards for other effects as well.

Many thanks to Tony Lackner for bringing the card caliper to life so expertly. I wish you lot of fun with this

Alexander de Cova

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