The Linking Rings

Nearly every account calls the rings Chinese and ancient, and nearly every account is repeating a nineteenth-century dealer's claim rather than a source. The earliest firm European records are from the early 1800s, and the routine became a staple of Victorian stage magic from there.

What is well documented is the modern shape of it. Ching Ling Foo and Chung Ling Soo — one Chinese, one a Englishman named William Robinson in costume — both built the rings into major stage acts around 1900. Dai Vernon's Symphony of the Rings, published in the 1960s, is the routine most performers still learn from, and it reduced a cumbersome eight-ring set to something with a shape and an ending.

Penn and Teller's version, performed with the method announced in advance, is the strongest argument that the effect survives knowing how it is done.

The individual moves are simple. The routine is not, and the gap between the two is where most people stop.

Rings are heavy, loud, and visible from the back of a room, which means every angle matters and there is nowhere to hide a fumble. A three-ring routine can be performed competently within a month. An eight-ring routine takes a year, mostly spent on what the rings are doing when they are not linking.

Start with three or four. The large stage sets look impressive in the box and are considerably harder to handle than they appear — the weight is real, and so is the noise when you drop one.