JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
How could you see an article heading of “An Educated Fly” and not share the secret? I don’t know, and so I am performing a bit of due diligence, sharing the story from Scientific American from 3 September 1898. There really isn’t that much to tell, and the title is probably better than the story: the large tablet is placed on a stage in front of an audience, with a pitchman telling some sort of warm-up story to create interest among the crowd; a fly of some sort (whether a model or a real fly pinned or tied to something, I don’t know) and placed on a little shelf beneath the board. The ringmaster would ask a question, and the fly move around and alight or somehow make it known as to its selection of the numbers/letters on the grid. The trick is revealed in the image below–after the blackboard on its pedestal is shown to the audience front-and-back, it is positioned over a trap door on the stage, where a confederate would rise up and position themselves inside the pedestal and operate the device holding the live/inanimate fly. That’s it. After the tricks were performed, the inside man would escape through the trap door, the pedestal would be wheeled out to display that it was empty, and that was that. Old trick, new fly.
