Help us get to over 8,745 articles in 2024.

If you know of a magician not listed in MagicPedia, start a New Biography for them. Contact us at magicpediahelp@gmail.com

Linking Pins

From Magicpedia, the free online encyclopedia for magicians by magicians.
Jump to: navigation, search

The Linking Pins is a trick invented and popularized by Jerry Andrus, in which the performer causes safety pins to "magically" link and unlink from one another.

History

The Linking Pins evolved from the old Piff-Paff-Poof, a popular trick in which the performer "magically" unlinked two ordinary pins. It was marketed by Gene Gordon in the early thirties and a presentation for it was printed within the "Vest Pocket and Impromptu Magic" column by W. F. Van Zandt in the December 1934 of The Linking Ring.[1] A few years later, a version attributed to Don White appeared in Hilliard's Greater Magic (1938). In 1943, L. Vosburgh Lyons published an approach using a gimmicked key-pin in The Phoenix, which he called Slip, Snap, Spoof.

Enter Jerry Andrus, who in 1955, released his Linking Pins. He used two regular pins as well as Lyons' gaffed pin, and had an entire routine linking and unlinking all three. The following year, he published what remains to this day the definitive treatise on the Linking Pins, Safety Pin-Trix. Ron Bauer had a comedy version published in The New Tops in 1962.

In 1978, Tony Slydini made a big splash when his Mystery of the Gold Pins was published in Apocalypse. It was also sold by him and through Palmer Magic as the Slydini Pins.

The development of the "soft" pin was published by Han van Senus in Apocalypse in 1982. It would provide inspiration for Dan Garrett and his popular Pin-Demonium, as well as Bruce Bernstein's Linking Pins Routine and Michael Weber's End to Pindemonium.

Gaetan Bloom developed a new and unique methods in the mid-eighties, and has become well-known for the trick.

A new gimmick was introduced by Nicholas Bengston in 2004, and sold as Dreamweaver through Murphy's Magic Supplies.

Publications

  • Climax for a Safety-Pin Routine (Rink): The Gen, Vol. 13 No. 6 (October 1957, pp. 180-181).
  • Rinking Pins (Rink): The Gen, Vol. 15 No. 12 (April 1960, pp. 300-304).
  • A Combination Routine (Pete Biro): M-U-M, Vol. 58 No. 2 (July 1968, pp. 40-41).
  • A Routine With Jerry Andrus' Linking Pins (John Stanfield): The Linking Ring, Vol. 53 No. 9 (September 1973, pp. 94-95).
    • Play Pins (John Stanfield): Marketed item, 1978.
  • Super Pin Routine (Edward Marlo): M-U-M, Vol. 68 No. 5 (October 1978, pp. 20-23).
    • Jon Racherbaumer, At the Table (1984, pp. 41-49).

The Mystery of the Gold Pins (Slydini): Apocalypse, Vol 1. No. 10 (October 1978, pp. 109-114).

  • Linking Pins Routine (Jim Rainho): M-U-M, Vol. 70 No. 12 (May 1981, p. 36).
  • The Incredible Linking Pins (Jose de la Torre): M-U-M, Vol. 73 No. 8 (January 1984, pp. 17-19).
    • M-U-M, Vol. 96 No. 5 (October 2006, pp. 48-49).
  • Ultimate Linking Pins: Gaetan Bloom, Smashing Close-Up (1984, VHS).


References

  1. Remix, MUM, October 2006