Robert-Houdin's Second Sight Revealed?

In the 1850s, a new act by Robert-Houdin, The Second Sight, presented at his Soirées Fantastiques theatre, caused a sensation. Robert-Houdin's young son sat blindfolded on stage, while his father asked the audience to produce various personal items. Despite being blindfolded, the son managed to guess and precisely describe the borrowed objects, and the act was a success.

However, in 1849, a certain Mr. F. A. Gandon published a work titled: La seconde vue dévoilée, dernier coup porté aux sorciers et aux sortilèges, Ouvrage entièrement nouveau, donnant à tout le monde la facilité de faire des expériences dites de Seconde-Vue ou de Double-Vue (Second Sight Unveiled, the final blow to witches and spells, an entirely new work, giving everyone the ability to perform so-called Second Sight or Double Sight experiments). It is said that this book contains the secret verbal code Robert-Houdin would use in his shows to communicate information about the object he was holding to his son!

The book La seconde vue dévoilée, from the collection Centre de Recherche sur la Prestidigitation

But Robert-Houdin had more than one trick up his sleeve. He improved the act, and quickly presented a brand new version: with a bell! Here, the magician would never utter a single word, and would simply alert his son that he was holding an object by the ringing of a small bell. That's all. The son, still deprived of sight with his eyes blindfolded, and without a single word from his father, still managed to describe the spectator's object in great detail. It is a miracle that Gandon's book cannot explain, just like today's magic historians who still have many doubts about the method used!

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