Buatier de Kolta was a contemporary of fellow French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin.
While there, he was a constant visitor to the theatre of Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin starring the name sake, Robert-Houdin.
He opens the box, and demonstrates it to be empty: he says that this technique of "propaganda" was used by French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin.
The Marvelous Orange Tree trick was used by the eponymous conjurer in Steven Millhauser's short story, "Eisenheim The Illusionist", subsequently filmed as The Illusionist (2006), where a more complex variant is shown.
This practice goes back at least as far as Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, who used hollow wax bullets colored to resemble lead balls.
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The same year Houdin, the Egyptologist Bob Brier, Tayoubi and Breitner with a team of engineers of Dassault Systèmes decided to analyse the King’s Chamber cracks with software normally used by industrial corporations to simulate the behaviour of their products in operation and to detect any structural weaknesses in order to solve problems as early as the design phase (SIMULIA).
In "The Three Magi", he acknowledges Robert-Houdin, Max Malini and Alexander Herrmann as major influences; in "Confidence", he cites Orson Welles and Titanic Thompson as inspiration for his street magic persona; and in "Ehrich Weiss", he celebrates the man we know as Houdini.