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Home > Library > Reference > Wikipedia Vanishing the Statue of
Liberty
Making the Statue of Liberty appear to disappear on live television in
1983 is one of David Copperfield's most memorable tricks. The illusion
was a creation of Jim Steinmeyer [1], and it is still unpublished.

Spoiler warning: The following section reveals a magic secret.
In the book Bigger Secrets, William Poundstone published his guesses
and detailed a plausible-sounding theory for how Steinmeyer's illusion
was accomplished. Poundstone suggests that the entire stage and
seating area for the audience was atop a rotating platform. Once the
curtains were closed, blocking the view, the platform was rotated—
slowly enough to be imperceptible. When the curtains opened again, the
audience was facing out to sea rather than toward the statue.
Poundstone further elaborates that, once the stage rotated, the statue
itself was mostly concealed behind a brightly-lit curtain tower. To
further misdirect attention, there were two rings of lights: one,
initially lit, around the statue, and another (dark and invisible at
first) in the area the audience would end up facing. When the trick
"happened", the statue's lights were doused and the others turned on.
The radar blip highlighted in the television presentation was simply
an animation. As for the three Kodak flash cameras taking pictures of
the statue at the moment that it "vanished," Poundstone points out
that the cameras' tiny flashbulbs would not be nearly powerful enough
to illuminate the statue on their own once the main lights had been
switched off.

Some claim that this explanation is unsatisfactory, maintaining that
one end of the statue's pedestal base was visible to the live audience
at all times. Furthermore, the size of the suggested platform would
have to be quite large to support the curtain towers and guidewires as
well as be moved in some silent fashion to not arouse suspicion in the
live audience.

Others in the trade claimed at the time that the statue itself was a
smaller scale model on a stage somewhere other than in New York City,
and that the "live" audience were paid actors. Supporting this claim
is the fact that the crown of the statue right before it disappears
shows bright white lights compared to the softer blue that appears in
the real statue, and the audience's reaction seems staged. Further,
there is loud applause heard after the disappearance, but no one in
the videotape seems to be clapping.

References
Poundstone, William. (1986). Bigger Secrets. Houghton Mifflin.

See also
David Copperfield's flying

External links
Vanishing the Statue of Liberty (shortened version) at YouTube

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed
encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors
(see full disclaimer)

Donate to Wikimedia

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