Since all the posts since last Sunday have focused on history, it's only proper to wind up “history week” by showing you something new created from something old.

Regular readers will remember my previous mention of Werner Miller, a retired mathematics teacher from Germany who regularly contributes to Online Visions, and is the author of Ear-Marked, a great book of mathematical magic.

Yes, it's Werner Miller who has taken two old ideas and turned them into something new. He's combined the classic age cards and the classic magic square into his new creation, the Age Cube!

It's apparently just a promotional cube featuring your information on one side, and different magic squares on each of the five remaining sides. However, it also allows you to perform the classic age card trick. The fact that they're arranged in the form of magic squares helps hide the binary basis of the effect.

Since this trick isn't a particularly deep mystery, it can also be taught with the give-away, for added value. This will most likely be kept much longer than a simple business card.

This isn't to say that the age cards, originally published in 1801 in Recreations in Mathematics by Charles Hutton, can't be improved. In a post from last June, the principle is applied to phone numbers. Owners of Stewart James In Print should look up Mentalscope, in which the principle is applied to letters.