Can anyone provide some information about the origins of the appearing pole principle? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Which one? There are at least three.

Hi Bill,

Thanks for your response, its the principle behind the ten foot pole, opinion pole, giant straw etc, that I am hoping to get some information on regarding its creator(s) and/or its earliest appearances(puns aside). Its the princile that I need info about, not the different effects since devloped. Thanks for any help you can give me.

The one you are wondering about was, to the best of my knowledge, first done by Sylvester the Jester. I think he put it out sometime around 1990 or so. It could have been earlier than that. It was called the 10 foot pole, but it was only 8 feet long. I still have one that I used at the Texas Renaissance Festival in 1994 at the 20th anniversary celebration gate ceremony.

John Ferrentino's "Original Pole from Box" pre dated Dan Sylvester's woodgrain covered pole. John Ferrentino and Joe Silkie were selling an appearing pole and it was in their lecture, but I don't know how long before Dan designed his version. The Jester's Appearing 10 ft Pole is probably the most well known of the straight pole productions which is why it is often mistaken as the first.

This brings up an interesting piece of trivia. How long is a 10 foot pole?

In Metric or English measurement? Or are you talking about the fellow from Warsaw?

Venetian Blinds

Hungarian Walt's

The original Sylvester the Jester 10 foot pole was just shy of 8 feet long. I have one here in my office, which I used at the Texas Renaissance Festival during a pre-show ceremony.

Dan Sylvester was recently interviewed on Magicbroadcast.com and spoke a bit about how he came up with the idea etc. They replay the interview every so often. He's an intresting fellow.

Vandy

I asked Paul Gross about this, because I knew he had carried both the Farentino pole and the Sylvester Pole. The Farentino Pole did predate the Sylvester Pole by a few years. Sylvester asked John if he could make one, and John said that he could, implying that it was for his own personal use.

I want to know methods, I have an appearing straw but I think that the pole works differently, can somebdoy pm me?

Defiantly Danny. In his lecture, He talks about being destructive while in the HD, cutting various tubes lengthwise and no one bothered him.
It was absolutely Danny.

It's notable that there are similarities to a vanishing or appearing cane BUT it works differently enough that a patent attorney would say it was "an advancement if the arts"

Additionally, Danny has invented over a dozen other original conceptual so no one can say he copies people. He is an a "inner-outer" (Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky) that means, he doesn't reverse engineer something, he gets an idea and pursues it, from the ground up, until it works. (Inner-outer, Stanislavsky).

I "inherited", in 1950, after he died, a "cigarette to wand" from my first mentor, Stuart Ross.

Stuart didn't "invent" it. It was a commercial prop from a magic shop. The 'cigarette" was standard size. The "wand" was about 12".

Made of an early "plastic material", somewhat like celluloid, it had been stored too long in its cigarette configuration, so that it no longer "worked".

I have no idea how long Stuart had it, but, I assume it must have been from the '30s.

This ad is in the Oct 1904 issue of Mahatma.

MAGICIANS: You cannot afford to he without one of Brehmer's barber poles. They are made from the best materials, painted in colors like a real barber pole. Measure 3-1/2 inches in length when closed, and 10 feet long when pulled out. Always sure to create laughter when you produce the pole from under someone's coat. Sent postpaid to any part of the U. S. for 60c. Address: CARL BREHMER, 2400 Jefferson St., Philadelphia, Pa

The pole that Bill mentions is telescopic in the same way as an appearing cane, so the effect is the same as the appearing pole, the method is different.
Al Flosso featured one in his interaction with a boy in the Miser's Dream.

Dick Oslund is absolutely correct!
The principle that Sylvester et al, used for the appearing pole is exactly as Dick Oslund describes with the celluloid cigarette to wand. This certainly predates 1944 as that was when the book 'The Trick Brain' was published and Fitzkee makes a point about the unusual method for the cigarette to wand. And in describing it, he reveals the method and indeed it is EXACTLY as the more modern versions of the 10 foot pole.

I have no doubt that Sylvester invented it (again) without any knowledge of the Fitzkee book or manufactured 'cigarette to wand'.

I heard that Jim Schuyler of Baltimore (passed way 2012) invented it with his appearing 4 feet magic wand. I still have mine.