I just want to jump in here and say Jonathan and Bill I realy enjoyed the subject and the posting in this thread...

When reading this I am remined of the movie "A Knights Tale"... What I found interesting in a classic story about Knights and swords and the love story - was they way that the melded modern dance and music into the plot and the story. To hook today's audience.

Old wine in a new bottle...

That is a big challange...

I find insperation in reading the old books.

I just finished reading this entire thread, because I was just re-reading my copy of The Secrets of Karl Germain. I have to tell you fellows that I really enjoyed what was said by all of the People who posted. Germaine is my favorite magician of all time. In fact I am trying like crazy to bring back his solid thru solid (re-worked). And I am entertaining the idea of bringing back his "The Diving Duck" only with a more moder twist. If anyone has any great Ideas about The Diving Duck, please contact me. I am not advertising, but saying that it took 40 years to get the Solid thru Solid the way it is now and it kind of played into what was being said. Something old can be something new! Our Future is in the past.

There are pitifully few new things in magic. Even some of the fairly high-tech material is not really new. Some of it is just a substitution of an electric motor for a spring motor.

I purchased a Harry Gordien card rising motor a few years ago. This is a completely silent motor from a windup victrola. You could easily cause three jumbo cards to rise with this thing, and it wouldn't make a sound. It was big and cumbersome, but heck, you could hide this inside a tabletop. Proper use of one of these would fool the pants off of a magic club!

If you want to get an idea of how little has been done in the past few centuries, read Hocus Pocus Junior, Ozanam, and Guyot. The cups and balls sections of these three books have 95% of what has been done with the cups and balls.