How Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear

The Disappearance of the Statue of Liberty
Warning: if you don't want to know how this illusion worked, please don't read any further.

Ever since he was a boy growing up in New Jersey, David Copperfield wanted to make the Statue of Liberty disappear and re-appear. The noted illusionist got his chance on a well-watched, televised magic special.

So television audiences could experience the disappearance as a live audience would, the film crew placed cameras on a boat that was filled with spectators and had a full view of the statue. Witnesses and timed cameras were placed around Liberty Island to take a series of still pictures before and after the statue's disappearance. In addition, a helicopter that was equipped with a television camera and spotlight soared above the statue.

During the illusion, a large curtain on the boat temporarily obscured the Statue of Liberty from the view of the audience and the main television camera.

When the curtain opened, the statue was gone. In addition, viewers were shown footage from the helicopter, which showed an empty pedestal on Liberty Island, as well as a sequence of still images that showed the disappearance of the statue from various angles. The effect was mind-blowing. So how was this done?
The Secret, Finally Exposed
A long kept secret, Copperfield owns a special machine that can stop time. Near the beginning of his career, he purchased the top secret device from an archeologist who discovered it at a dig in Peru. Seems some long-gone civilization had obtained the device from space aliens.

The archeologist was an amateur magician who, for years, used the time machine to switch a svengali deck for a one-way deck, greatly improving the climax of his svengali card routine.

The archeologist approached Copperfield with the machine and sold it for an undisclosed sum. We don’t know how much he got for it, but the archeologist is said to be living in the finest trailer park in Utah.

If you've seen Copperfield somehow vanish from one location and reappear in another, much of the time, he's using his time machine. (For the record, Copperfield can actually dematerialize and rematerialize his body. But the process is tiring and when he's doing lots of shows in a day, he relies on the time machine.)

When the curtain closed and obscured the statue from the audience, Copperfield simply pulled a switch, which stopped all time. With real time stopped and the audience and television cameras effectively frozen, a large barge with a giant crane was brought in.

The crane lifted the statue from its base and the barge moved out of sight. After 32 hours of relative time to move the statue, Copperfield pressed a button to resume real time, and the statue had seemingly disappeared. To bring the statue back, he simply reversed the process.

[link to magic.about.com]