Thayer Magic Manufacturing Company, Los Angeles, Spirito, 1932, Wood, metal, and plastic

Collection of John Gaughan, Los Angeles

The Spirito radio’s exterior appeared to offer cutting-edge technology in the 1930s. The inside, though, was completely empty apart from a hidden coil that allowed the voice of an assistant offstage to be broadcast as “the spirit.” Magicians played off the connections between science and the spirit world with their own devices such as Spirito.

Thayer Magic, a company that produced equipment for magicians from 1907 to the 1930s, claimed “nothing supernatural for Spirito” apart from being “the master scientific marvel of the age!”

SPIRITO

THAYER’S LATEST SENSATION!

THE RADIO THAT TUNES IN ON A “MYSTERIOUS UNKNOWN”

Thayer Magic Company, Los Angeles, Spirito box label, about 1932. Collection of John Gaughan Los Angeles. Photo by Jeff Chang