Conjuring Trick using IC 555
A former President of the Magic Circle, three times awarded the International Award for Magic, commented when he saw this trick: “Absolutely incredible!”
It might be of interest to conjurers that it was a vaguely similar trick that gave rise to the idea. The trick, called the “Domino Box”, was published in the Magic Circular in April 1991, and revealed the contents of a box by giving a parallel LED readout through smoky perspex. However, it used more than twice as many components, and the smoky perspex was open to some suspicion…
The elements of any good conjuring trick are a combination of simplicity on the one hand, and bafflement on the other - both of which are present in this trick.
The design uses tactile sense (or rather, neural sense) to reveal the contents of a box. The box contains 4 shapes, as in a child’s shape sorter. The conjurer asks a person to secretly remove from the box any shape or shapes of his or her choosing, then to close the box, and to place a silk over it. The conjurer then rests a hand on the silk, and through “extra-sensory powers” reveals the contents of the box.
