Help us get to over 8,748 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

August Roterberg

From Magicpedia, the free online encyclopedia for magicians by magicians.
Revision as of 20:56, 11 November 2008 by Philippe billot (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search

August Roterberg (1867 - September 23, 1928) was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States around 1883 as a teenager. He started out selling magic by mail order and then opened a magic store in Chicago, in the lobby of the "old" Palmer House Hotel.

Roterberg really started the modern age of magic publishing. His books were the first in English written expressly for magicians. Roterberg's books were published by a magic dealer specifically for sale in magical depots, rather than for wide distribution to the general public. He ended up selling his mail order business in 1908 to Ralph W. Read and his shop to Arthur & Carl Felsman in 1916.

Roterberg is best known as a magic inventor and is credited with inventing Multiplying Billiard Balls. But according to John Braun in The Linking Ring, Vol. 29, N° 6, august 1949, page 28, George F. Wright seems to be the creator. He worked at store and shop of Roterberg on

He eventually retired around 1917 and eventually moved to California, where lived until his death.

Books

  • The Modern Wizard (1895)
  • Latter Day Tricks (1896)
  • New Era Card Tricks (1897)
  • Card Tricks and How To Do Them (1902)
Wikipedia-logo.png This page incorporated content from August Roterberg,

a page hosted on Wikipedia. Please consult the history of the original page to see a list of its authors. Therefor, this article is also available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License