Editing Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (section)

===Marriage to Josèphe Cecile Houdin===
He performed at social parties as a professional magician in Europe and the United States.<ref name="ref3"/> It was during this period while at a party that he met Josèphe Cecile Houdin, the daughter of a Parisian watchmaker, Jacques-François Houdin, who also originally came from Blois.<ref name="ref2" /><ref name="ref3" /> Jean-Eugène fell in love with her at their first meeting.<ref name="ref3" /> On 8 July 1830, they were married; he then hyphenated his own name to hers and became Robert-Houdin.<ref name="ref2" /><ref name="ref3" /> He and Josèphe had eight children, of whom three survived.<ref name="ref2" />

He moved to Paris and worked in his father-in-law's wholesale shop. Jacques-François was among the last of the watchmakers to use the old method of handcrafting each piece and embraced his new son-in-law's ambitions for mechanism.<ref name="ref3"/> While Houdin worked in the main shop, Jean-Eugène was to tinker with mechanical toys and [[Automaton|automatic figures]].<ref name="ref3"/> With his work in the shop, Jean-Eugène was still practicing magic. Quite by accident, Robert-Houdin walked into a shop on the Rue Richelieu and discovered that it sold magic. He visited the store, which was owned by a Père (Papa) Roujol.<ref name="ref2"/> There, he met fellow magicians, both amateur and professional, where he engaged in talk about conjuring, and he met an aristocrat by the name of Jules de Rovère, who coined the term [[Sleight of hand|"prestidigitation"]] to describe a major misdirection technique magicians used.<ref name="ref2"/><ref name="ref3"/>

At Papa Roujol's, Robert-Houdin learned the details to many of the mechanical tricks of the time as well as how to improve them. From there, he built his own mechanical figures, like a singing bird, a dancer on a tightrope, and an [[automaton]] doing the cups and balls. His most acclaimed automaton was his writing and drawing figure. He displayed this figure before [[Louis-Philippe of France|King Louis Philippe]] and eventually sold it to [[P. T. Barnum]].<ref name="ref3"/>

On 19 October 1843, Josèphe died at the age of thirty-two,<ref name="ref2"/><ref name="ref3"/> having been ill for months. At her death, having three young children to take care of, he remarried in August to Françoise Marguerite Olympe Braconnier, a woman ten years younger,<ref name="ref2"/><ref name="ref3"/> who soon took over the household.

Robert-Houdin loved to watch the big magic shows that came to Paris.<ref name="ref2"/> He dreamed about some day opening his own theatre. In the meantime, he was hired by a friend by the name of Count de l'Escalopier<ref name="ref2"/> to perform at private parties.<ref name="ref3"/>

Now that he had free time, he began constructing equipment for his own use instead of selling it to others.<ref name="ref2"/> The income from the shop and his new inventions gave him enough money to experiment on new tricks using glass apparatus that would be (or at least appear to be) free of trickery. He envisioned a stage that would be as elegant as the drawing rooms in which he was hired to perform. He also decided that a magician should be dressed as such by wearing traditional evening clothes.<ref name="ref3"/>