Card Throwing - History

History

Card throwing finds origins in Western stage magic and in Eastern martial arts legends and cinema. Eastern martial artists refined the technique of throwing light objects until they could toss them with deadly speed and accuracy, though most of these depictions are wildly exaggerated.

Western card throwing techniques as they are passed among performers today are attributed to stage magicians in the late 19th Century. The exact origins of "flying card" tricks are unknown, but Alexander Herrmann is widely attributed with first including card throwing in a major act. He would use custom made cards, sign them, and then throw them into the audience as potential souvenirs. The magician Howard Thurston also used card throwing as a major part of his act. The cards that they used, however, were heavier than those commonly used today.

Many magicians commissioned specially printed cards, known as throwing cards, throwouts, scaling cards or souvenir cards to use for these purposes. Generally, such cards featured the image and name of the magician, and often featured optical illusions, mystical images, and text and graphics from other advertisers.

The impressive SPEED that magicians could throw the cards gave rise to a myth that a card could kill or seriously injure someone if thrown correctly by a person with enough force. However, this myth was tested on the Discovery Channel program MythBusters, and subsequently debunked. Mythbusters' co-host Adam Savage, was already quite familiar with the throwing card trick and was shown to be quite adept at performing it, with his maximum throwing speed being clocked at 25 miles per hour or 40 km/h (which failed to cause any injury). The episode also feature record holder and card throwing expert Ricky Jay, who demonstrated card throwing, and also had the speed of his throws was clocked by the Mythbusters. A playing card lacks enough mass to transfer sufficient energy to its target on impact, and even when accelerated mechanically by an electric motor at about 150 mph, it did not puncture the skin enough to kill a person.

Today, magicians all over the world use card throwing as parts of their act. Ricky Jay, Jim Karol, and Rick Smith, Jr., all world class card throwers and magicians, are among the most well known people to frequently use card throwing during performance.