The illusion was devised by Jonathan Pendragon in the early 1990s, with assistance from Joseph Patire, and first performed by Jonathan and his then-wife Charlotte. According to Jonathan, discussing the illusion on a DVD he produced that talks about it in detail, it was developed as a result of experiments he did with the "Disc Sawing" performed by Doug Henning on his 1978 TV special. He also claims to have been unaware of the very similar Les Arnold Crystal Sawing until after he had started to perform Clearly Impossible in public. When first devised, the exclusive manufacturing rights were held by Bill Smith. By 2009, those rights had apparently passed to Dan Summers.