The Spiritualist newspaper > No.140, April 30th 1875

April 30, 1875.
THE SPIRIT UIALST,
211
him along the ground in broad daylight, and how an
English gentleman who by purchase became the owner
of the fell secret, refused to reveal it to others, and
could never hear the subject mentioned without a
shudder. “ The man who gave me the secret of these
here pills,” says cheap Jack, “ is dead, and on his dying
bed said to me ‘Never tell nobodyOliver Wendell
Holmes after describing the wonderful “one boss shay”
built of imperishable materials, tells how its con¬
structor resolved that the apron of the said chaise
should be of unexampled durability, so
The apron was made of tough old hide,
Pound in the pit when the tanner died.
and Mr. Maskelyne’s secret, like the lost leather in the
tan-pit, has gained by long keeping, since the greater
the mystery the more is the curiosity of the public
stimulated. “ I made every part of the mechanical
arrangements of Psycho myself, with the assistance of
one man,” said Mr. Maskelyne, when I went to see
Psycho for the first time last Saturday, “ and,” con¬
tinued Mr. Maskelyne, “ he kept me and my assistant
hard at work for two years. Many a night has he kept
me up, so I have a kind of affection for Psycho.”
DESCRIPTION OF PSYCHO AND HIS PERFORMANCES.
Psycho is a small figure seated upon a wooden box
full of mechanism; the figure and the box can be
examined inside and outside by a committee from the
audience, then placed on the top of a large glass
cylinder about two feet high, also well examined by the
committee, and both the cylinder and Psycho can be
closely watched by the committee while the automaton
plays a game at whist, and while Mr. Maskelyne and
everybody connected with the performance is not near
the figure. Psycho and his box are really well filled
with clockwork; no cunning arrangement of mirrors or
optical illusion conveys the idea of the presence of
mechanism which has no real existence. The members
of the committee may pass their arms right through
the small box on which Psycho sits, and pass a stick
through the centre of his body. The above engraving
represents Psycho, sitting upon his box.
Several of the motions of Psycho are evidently
produced by the clockwork, but the problem is to
ascertain how the unseen intelligent operator who
works the automaton, can start and stop one or another
set of clockwork at will, so as to make Psycho lift up
the right card when his hand is over it, or make him
strike a bell.
Before I went to see Psycho last Saturday, I inferred
from the newspaper descriptions of the performance
that his box was placed upon a double cylinder of glass,
so that while the outer cylinder was motionless and
supported the box, the inner cylinder by being turned
in one direction by an unseen operator below the stage,
could start one set of clockwork, and by being turned
in the other could stop it; also, that by being pushed
upwards, or pulled downwards it could start or stop a
second set of clockwork governing other motions of the
figure, the committee not knowing all the time that
they were looking through two closely-fitting glass
cylinders instead of one. They could only discover
the presence of the second cylinder while looking
through the arrangement, by what opticians call the
“double reflection ” of light from the surfaces of the
glasses. This might be abolished by filling the small
air space between the two cylinders with glycerine,
and then nobody could tell that two thicknesses of glass
were there instead of one.
But when I saw Mr. Maskelyne roll his glass cylin¬
der off the pedestal, and let anybody lift and examine
it, and when it was proved that the surface of the
pedestal was nothing but an unbroken piece of green
baize, it became evident that the secret was of a deeper
nature.
After carefully watching the working of the auto¬
maton, I came at last to the conclusion that the clock¬
work was started or stopped by the unseen operator by
means of compressions or partial exhaustions of the air
inside the cylinder. Suppose a bladder to be tied on
the end of the upper glass tube in the accompanying
diagram; so long as there was no pressure of air in
the tube the bladder would hang down in a flaccid
state. But blow through the tube, the bladder will
swell out, and if in so doing it pressed against a brass
lever arm, the motion of that arm might be made to
start a set of clockwork, and when the arm fell back
again in consequence of sucking the air out of the
bladder, the clockwork would stop. All this time, a
person looking through the glass tube would see
nothing.
The above, I think, explains the principle on which
Psycho is worked, so the remainder of the explanation
is merely a matter of detail.
How is the air compressed or exhausted at will in
Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke’s glass cylinder, and why
does it not escape too rapidly at the upper and lower
edges thereof ?
In Pig. 3 A, A, A, A is the glass cylinder, and B, B
the top of the box covered with green baize, upon
which the cylinder rests. D, D is a metal plate under
the green baize, ‘perforated between E, E, under the
green baize, with a great number of small holes, so
that when there is any pressure of air in the chamber
H, F, H, the air passes freely through the circular area
of the plate full of holes, then through the green baize
so as to cause pressure inside the great glass cylinder
above. The compressed air next passes through, say, four
concealed holes K, K, N, N, in the bottom M, M of the
box on which Psycho sits, and forces up the four