- In the days of King Arthur, they lived in Camelot, A source who entertained the royal court with miraculous feet south, magic high.

Above the castle walls, the ancient ne meets with members of the magic round table.

Come with us now to the secret room of - Welcome.

Welcome once more to my secret room.

It's nice to see you again.

We have so many things to do today that I just don't think I'll have time for our usual opening trick.

We'll, we'll have to make caliber rise right now.

Will you help me?

Fine.

Let's say the magic words together.

Fiddly, die fiddly.

D magic sword rise for me.

And the magic words.

Two words today are clever people.

I wonder what Excalibur means by clever people.

I think he's talking about the Chinese people and their inventiveness.

We'll find out a little more about how clever the Chinese people are and the wonderful things they've done very shortly.

I'm, in fact, I'm going to do some sketching on the pad right now.

And what's that noise?

Who's coming in?

My secret?

Chauncey.

I was going to draw what?

You've got water in that bowl.

You certainly do.

You, oh, I know Chauncey wants me to do a Chinese trip.

We're gonna talk about Chinese people who are very clever and they're also clever magicians.

So, Chauncey, I'm gonna take this, this bowl and I'm going to throw the water in it right at our, at our friend duck.

Oh, you got just a little wet, didn't you?

Well, I'll be careful.

In fact, I'll put the bowl right back here, Chauncey, right on the tray.

And I'm going to cover the bowl.

And you'll see why in just a moment, this lovely Chinese cloth, or F as it's called.

I'm gonna put it right over the bowl.

Chauncey, right over and hold.

It's bashful.

Thanks Chauncey.

Oh, Mike, the page.

You wanna catch the bowl of water for me now?

Don't you get wet, Juan.

I'm gonna throw it on the count of three.

Ready?

Alright.

1, 2, 2 and a half.

I fooled you, didn't I?

- Yes.

- We'll throw it on three and three and it is gone as you can see.

What are you doing here?

You don't think I'd be a tricky magician?

Hide the bowl on me.

Do you say?

I'll tell you what, I think you, you helped me vanish.

That too.

This is Mike, the page, my assistant Michael, if you'll be good enough to go get the four magic coins, I'll do that for our closing trick today.

Thanks for helping with the Chinese bowl vanish.

Thank you Mike.

Bye.

See you.

I was saying how clever the Chinese people are that a phrase has come down through the century and the English speaking races say clever these Chinese, because whenever something clever is done, they think of the Chinese.

And there are many inventions.

Did you know for example, that the Chinese invented, they invented gun powder?

The method of of devising a powder that would shoot a bullet out a gun.

Now this might be a bad invention 'cause it could be very destructive.

The Chinese invented paper like this paper made of, of, of cloth, and they invented printing.

Let me show you just how the Chinese invented printing, and I'm gonna have to use a knife.

Please don't touch knives in the home.

This is for mother and daddy, but it'll explain how block printing was invented.

I'm just going to cut the end of that potato off.

And then a little more there like that.

And then a little more like that.

And now I have cut a triangle.

Now actually, the Chinese would make letters of wood and they'd put ink on the wood.

Do you know what?

Chinese invented ink.

Also, by letting the soot from a candle or burning wood, accumulate on a guard over the top, they'd scrape the soot off, mix it with oil or water and they had ink.

Now this is ink in the pad.

So I think of the Chinese when I use ink.

And you should from now on too, because they did truly invent ink.

Alright?

Suppose this is a piece of wood in a letter A, they would paint ink on the bottom in that manner and then they would press the letter against whatever they wanted to print with.

You See, you can make interesting, interesting block letters by having your mother or daddy cut various designs.

You can do abstract painting that way too.

As a matter of fact, you know what else?

The Chinese invented something that you use every day.

I was going to say money, but that isn't quite true.

They invented, they used this kind of money originally, coins made of brass gold or silver or copper with a square hole in the middle.

And then because they had invented block printing and because they had invented ink, they were the first people in the world to print money on paper.

The first people to print money on paper.

They were the first people in the world to use a wheelbarrow.

We don't know just exactly who invented the wheel, but they did.

The Chinese did invent the wheelbarrow.

Very, very clever people.

These Chinese speaking of money.

And this is printed money.

I knew an old Chinese magician once his name was fooling you.

And he did a very, very interesting trick with money.

Now this isn't paper money.

This is your 20th century American money.

Yes.

And I wonder if you can tell me just what denomination of coin it is if I spread it on the table.

You know what these are?

Well, two of them go into a dollar, two of them go into a dollar.

So each one is worth how much?

50 cents.

And this is 50 cents.

It happens to have a picture of Ben Franklin on one side.

That's the head side and a bell on the other, the tail side.

So two of these half dollars or 50 cent pieces make a dollar, two make a dollar.

And over here we have two more.

So altogether we have how much money?

A half dollar, a half dollar, a half dollar and a half dollar.

That's 50 pennies.

Remember?

Or two quarters or 10 dimes.

Two halves.

Make a whole or a whole dollar.

So we have a dollar here.

And we have a dollar here.

Now, when old, when old fooling, you did the trick.

He liked to have music and he had a special wand, a special magic wand.

And if he would listen into one end of the wand and twist the other, he would get Chinese music.

Let's listen.

No, no, no.

That that, that's not, wait, that's oh, that's the wrong end.

That music is too fast and it's not shiny.

Let's listen over here.

Here we go.

Slower.

Still not shiny.

No, no, no that, no, no, no, no.

That's not it.

I'm going to go halfway between.

Maybe we'll get Chinese music.

Let's listen there.

Find music with magic wand.

Watch.

Watch the four coins.

1, 2, 3, 4, half dollars.

Put them in my left hand.

1, 2, 3, 4, half dollars.

Four of them in this fist.

Four.

Nothing in this hand.

I'm going to place the empty right hand under the table.

Four coins here.

Place the hand under the table, listen to it.

Go.

Now we just have three coins and one went under the table.

That leaves three more to go through the table.

One, two, and three.

Again, I will keep the coins in this hand.

Place this one coin under the table like this and listen very closely.

One coin under the table.

Listen to it.

Go.

Now I just have two coins here to go through.

And one, two there.

Let's see if we can make a third coin.

Go through the table.

1, 2, 3, and four, just two in this hand.

Let's see if the two in the fist join the two in this hand.

You think that's possible?

Alright, and now 1, 2, 3 have gone through the table.

Let's try it again.

One in the left hand.

1, 2, 3.

In the right hand.

Three.

And it went through.

We have 1, 2, 3.

And we still have one here.

Something went wrong.

Oh, I know.

This is a bashful coin.

I'll have to use a, I'll have to use a glass so you won't see how the trick is done.

See the coin in the glass?

I'm gonna make it go through undercover of the paper.

There's the coin.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention that the coin must always be heads up like that.

There it goes right through the table.

Everything the hole works up, the glass went through, but the coin is still there.

Maybe if I use my strong right hand and pushed it through, it would join the other three.

Let me use my right hand this time.

Alright.

Oh, I still didn't use it in a strong enough fashion.

This is my strong hand.

Alright, I'm gonna hit it very hard against the table.

Nothing here.

Of course.

Here we go.

One, two.

And sure enough, the fourth coin went through the table.

That was a favorite trick of old fooling you and i. I hope you enjoyed the four coins and the glass through the table.

Let's review again what our Chinese friends invented.

Do you remember?

Well, first of all, they invented, they invented paper made from cloth.

This is cloth paper.

Very strong.

Now I'm going, what did they also do?

Maybe this will remind you if I put this blank piece of paper in my little Chinese printing press Watch, we open it and lo and behold, the white piece of paper is now an American dollar bill.

So what did the Chinese invent besides paper?

Well, they invented printed money.

It sure saves a lot of time carrying paper money around instead of hard, heavy metal money, doesn't it?

They invented the The wheelbarrow, right?

They invented block.

This is a type of block printing.

When a device like this is used to stamp up upon a piece of paper, you use an ink pad and then you merely stamp whatever you want to write on the paper.

That's easier than writing longhand, isn't it?

And they also invented gunpowder.

Gunpowder.

And remember I said guns are dangerous.

Never point them at anyone, never play with them.

Or for your mother and daddy.

Oh, I wish all guns went off like that with a harmless bang.

See you later.

Goodbye now.

Goodbye.

Merlin was produced in the studios of Ohio University Television, Athens, Ohio.