Introduction
by Cory X. Shull
The Expositor, published in 1805 by William Frederick Pinchbeck, was the first conjuring book published in America. It is commonly referred to as 'The Pig Book' due to the woodcut of a pig in the frontispiece and the book's thorough explanation of the learned pig effect. Also explained are the Acoustic Temple, the Philosophical Swan, a number of early conjuring feats.
The Expositor was written as a series of letters between the author "W. F. P." (William Frederick Pinchbeck) to an unknown (and most-likely imaginary) acquaintance "A. B.". Thus, the book is divided into a series of letters from the one to the other; questions in one letter from A. B. are answered in the next by W. F. P..
Removed from this on-line edition is the long 's' typographical style of the era, in which every instance of the letter 's' that is not capitalized and not terminating a word is is represented with a letter looking similar to an 'f', but with the crossbar remoevd.
Other typographical effects used which could not be duplicated here are the use of f-ligatures (the special characters used to represent the character sequences 'ff', 'fi', 'ft', 'ffi', and 'fft'), the 'ct' ligature, and the old 'lowercase numerals' in which the numbers have ascenders and descenders, much like normal text.
Also in the original book is the 'catchword' at the end of the page, in which the first word of the every page is duplicated on the last line of the previous page.
At the bottom of many pages are what I assume to be signature markings. Page 13, for instance, contains 'B' centered on the last line (with the catchword right-justified), four pages later we find 'B2', and eight pages later 'C'. This pattern continues throughout the book. These are most likely indicators the printer added to keep the signatures of the book in the proper order when cut and bound.
There are many instances of bars, rules, and dingbats in the original text which have not been replicated here.
Note by Marko: Not too long ago (I write in 2000) Cory Shull's html version of "The Expositor" was perhaps the only magic book on the World Wide Web. I found it one happy day and it was the inspiration for The Learned Pig Project. I want to thank Cory for donating her pioneering work (which I, with her permission, took the liberty to format in compliance with TLPP's style).