Many years back a good friend of mine, also a magician, introduced me to “The Wandering Hole.” It was a Tenyo creation developed by Hideo Kato and released in 1979. At the time, I thought it was a really good trick. Of course, I was 13 years old and easily impressed, but it was still a good trick for a young man of my age.

If you are unfamiliar with the trick, let me quickly describe it for you. It was a sheet of plastic with a hole in it. You would poke a pen through the hole and using the pen you could make that hole travel anywhere on the sheet of plastic that you pleased. Ultimately, you would stop at a spot completely different from where you started, remove the pen and the hole was left behind.

It fooled me badly.

I bring this up because the pen that was used in the Tenyo trick was precisely what the original “Pen Through Anything” by John Cornelius is, which wasn't developed until somewhere around 10 years later. Unfortunately, Mr. Cornelius refuses to give any credit to Hideo Kato preferring to give the credit to John Kennedy (specifically Kennedy's cigarette through coin trick).

I wouldn't mind so much if it weren't for the hard line stance that Mr. Cornelius takes regarding other manufacturers of a similar product. It is hypocritical of Cornelius to complain about “his” product being knocked off by other manufacturers when his product is a knock off, itself.

Fact of the matter is, the Cornelius pen isn't like any pen I've ever seen used by anyone in my entire life. In all honesty, I could not pull a Cornelius pen from my pocket and do anything believable with it. Sure, it can be handled by the spectators and it even writes, but it simply doesn't look like any kind of pen that anyone would be using unless they were a doctor or lawyer. For my money, the very best pen to use for a “pen through” effect is one of the “knock off” versions that looks like a pen you'd be likely to buy at the corner drug store or gas station.

Ironically, these “knock off” pens look very much like the old “Wandering Hole” pens and nothing like the Cornelius pen. Still, Mr. Cornelius claims that these knock off versions are intellectual theft. Again, I would refer Mr. Cornelius to Hideo Kato.

I think the statement that Cornelius issued regarding this subject points out what I'm really trying to say:

“All of my items, Bendable pen, Perfect Pen, and Thought Transmitter, are original with me. I did not give anyone permission to copy or manufacture them. The instructions are all copyrighted. In most cases I spent 6 months to a year to develop these effects.

“If someone takes all of my ideas, research and development, then markets a copy, I am stuck with all of my time, research ,development, plus a few thousand parts that I had specially made. If the people that advertise the Knock Off versions would just come to me, we would both make money and they would have a stream of new tricks by the Originator coming to them. If dealers sell the knock offs, the people that supply original ideas will go into non magical items or elsewhere and new items will dry up (is this worth it when you consider the number of effects that they could invent over years?).”

I believe that Hideo Kato could say the exact same thing of John Cornelius. Still, Cornelius is outraged by the idea that his pen was directly derived from the Kato version. In another statement, Cornelius claims, “The Tenyo Wandering Hole was a piece of plastic with a moveable hole. Sure it included a pen with magnets but I doubt you could do the pen through anything with that pen. If you could, Tenyo had about ten years to put the trick out.”

A rather flippant attitude coming from someone so indignant over the perceived theft of “his” intellectual material. In fact, I'll take it a step further - what if those knock off versions are not knocked off from the Cornelius pen, but rather from Kato's pen? Since crediting Kennedy gives Cornelius license to bypass Kato, then certainly by crediting Kato it is perfectly alright to bypass Cornelius.

The knife cuts both ways.

As always, take care and thank you for reading.

Mike