David Copperfieldat the registry office David Seth Kotkinis one of the illusionists most famous of all times and in 1983 he earned the record for the greatest illusion in historydoing “disappear” the Statue of Liberty live on TV in front of millions of viewers. This feat made him one of the most famous illusionists of the century, revered like a rock star. But how did he do it? The trick is quite simple and doesn’t have to do with any supernatural power: it’s all a matter of technique and psychology.
When Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear: the magic trick
The magic trick came to life on the evening ofApril 8, 1983. The audience of live spectators (about 20 people) was seated on a platform Liberty Island positioned in front of the Statue of Libertyas indicated by the image below. Two were also present in front of the stands scaffolding necessary to support the lights and the marquee.

When the show started on marquee it rose quickly between the columns, obscuring the view of both the live audience and those at home, whose point of view was the same. While the magician made strange gestures and uttered mysterious words, he came staged a play of lights with live musicso as to raise the tension between them millions of connected people on the CBS TV channel. At a certain point the awning fell and… magic! The Statue of Liberty was gone and there was no trace of it anymore. Obviously the public went into raptures, incredulous in the face of such an incredible trick.
After raising the tent again, the magician repeated the ritual: magic words, apparently random gestures, a play of music and lights… and voilàthe statue had reappeared!
The disappearance of the Statue of Liberty: the technical explanation of the illusion
Let’s start from the moment the awning was raised, represented by a blue rectangle in the image below. At that exact moment the platform the audience was on began to rotate. A slow rotation, so slow as to be imperceptible to spectators.

Some might think that it is impossible that no one noticed the movement: this was actually made possible by Copperfield himself who, through the music and light show, managed not only to shift the audience’s attention but also to mask noise and vibration linked to the rotation of the platform itself.
Overall the audience was rotated by about 10° in less than two minutesa value sufficient to allow one of the two scaffoldings to obstruct the line of sight, making the statue “invisible” to the public: for this reason when the awning is lowered the statue seems to have disappeared!
The same mechanism was also repeated in the second moment of the magic number, rotating the platform in the opposite direction and bringing the Statue of Liberty back into viewers’ field of vision.
