Case: 082The early reversible court cards pack invented by a French card maker of Agen in 1745. But the French government, which controlled the design of playing cards, prohibited the printing of cards with this innovation. The Anglo-American pack with this design was printed only around 1802 by Thomas Wheeler. The early packs with corner and edge indices enabled players to hold their cards with one hand, commonly used only from the end of the 18th century. The first Anglo-American deck with this innovation was the Saladee's Patent, in 1864. Before haft-19th century, all Ace cards are indexed with number 1, not A in the 1notA Regular deck. The term Ace itself comes from Anglo-Norman language, derived from the Latin as (the smallest unit of coinage). As the Ace card has the most blank space to bear the duty stamp, this led to elaborate designs of ace cards: the ace of spades in England, the ace of clubs in France, and the ace of diamonds in Russia. It take more than two century to get the modern playing cards deck from the 15th century French-suits system.
Related Case: 076 to 087