Ask who first produced a rabbit from a top hat and you get two names, one date, and a muddle.
The usual credit goes to Louis Comte, a Swiss-born Parisian billed as the King's Conjurer, who is said to have done it in 1814. Comte performed for three French kings and made his reputation borrowing a hat from someone in the audience and producing things from it.
The rival name is John Henry Anderson, the Scottish showman who toured the world as the Great Wizard of the North. Anderson is credited in plenty of accounts as the first. He was also born in 1814, which settles that. He could not have done anything that year except arrive.
Milbourne Christopher, whose Illustrated History of Magic remains the standard reference, dates the trick to the 1830s and declines to name anyone. Anderson gets credit in his account for popularizing it, not inventing it. Old posters show him pulling out rabbits by the armful.
The choice of animal was practical. Rabbits are quiet, easy to handle, inclined to hold still under bright light, and able to compress themselves into a very small space and stay there. The top hat, which appeared in Europe in the late 1700s, was simply the right shape and could be borrowed from a stranger to prove it was ordinary.
The strangest part is what happened next. Working magicians will tell you they have never produced a rabbit from a hat, and have never watched another magician do it either. The most recognizable image in all of magic survives almost entirely as a picture of itself.
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader’s money, real estate, and business coverage.