Y’all know who and when invented the half pass? Because I’ve looked in the "Royal Road..." and "Expert Card Technique" and couldn’t find it. Dude huhu
I’m sure there is an expert at the card table that could tell me.
Thanks, Alex Day

This is a good question!

The earliest Half Pass I've seen is Henry Christ. There isn't much information as it is about the Half Pass as it is, which makes it difficult to pin-point who invented it.

Much like the TT. I'm sure thousands of years ago Egyptians used things on their thumbs to make stuff disappear.

Josh London

According to Wesley James and the Magic Lineage Project, the Half Pass was an invention of Henri Decremps Pinetti and first published in 1790 in the book "Testament de Jerome Sharp."

More recent and valuable sources of Half Pass variations can be found in Giobbi's Card College Vol. 4, or the Richard Kaufman's "On the Pass" re-release onto DVD.

I thought the inventor of the half pass was S.W. Er. :0

Today I found Jean Hugard's translation of 'Half Pass' in July 1942 issue of "Conjuror's Magazine". The original description is in "Testament of Jerome Sharp" (published in 1786, not 1790) by Henri Decremps as Michael Sibbernsen-san posted.

The Half Pass is not like the one we commonly use today. We reverse bottom half. But the old method is to Pass the top half to bottom revesering the half in the process.

Hideo Kato

P.S.
The same method as Decremps wrote is also written in Professor Hoffman's "Modern Magic".

On a related note, when did the strategy of facing the pack as a switch method come into use?

Ie one turns over the deck (secretly) and then openly takes the top card(s) as if they were the cards previously seen on the top of the pack?

As far as I know that switch of cards Jonathan-san mentioned was used by Ponsin in his Ace Assembly. It is written in "Nouvelle Magie Blache Devoilee" published in 1853.

Hideo Kato

Perhaps its the original creator of the Ovette Master Move..... whoever that is.