![]() ![]() “The kaleidoscope at its inception also invoked a craze, with prints and newspaper articles describing it as a ‘mania’ the like of which had never been seen before. No book and no instrument in the memory of man ever produced such a singular effect.”īrewster may come across like a self-aggrandizing hype man, but Correia cites that letter in a piece she wrote for the Scientific Instrument Society’s quarterly bulletin last year, which argues-among other points-that comparisons can be made between the kaleidoscope’s early popularity and Nintendo’s 2016 hit, Pokemon Go: You can form no conception of the effect which the instrument excited in London all that you have heard falls infinitely short of the reality. “This is the universal opinion, and therefore the mortification is very great. The real Brewster, however, took it hard. “Both assured me that had I managed my patent rightly, I would have made one hundred thousand pounds by it!” he wrote in a letter to his wife in 1818. He took the stage to bagpipe music and a smoke machine before declaring to the audience: “I wish I’d gotten a better patent!” During a gala at the 1994 convention of the Brewster Kaleidoscope Society (BKS), scope artist Judith Paul hired an actor to dress as the organization’s namesake. Image: Public Domainīrewster’s patent fail is still a running joke in the kaleidoscope community. ![]() While the outside of a Brewster kaleidoscope was usually made of wood, a quick-and-dirty version can be constructed with something as low-frills as the cardboard core of a toilet paper roll.ĭiagrams from Brewster’s 1819 Treatise on Kaleidoscopes. The cell can hold anything-beads, gems, seashells, liquid, Sea Monkeys-and its contents are reflected and multiplied in the scope’s mirrors to produce a symmetrical circular pattern known as a mandala, which is visible through the eyepiece on the other end. One end-piece is usually opaque, and a case known as the “object cell” or “object case” is placed in front of it. Your basic scope is made up of at least two mirrors, placed at an angle and enclosed in a tube. Unfortunately for Brewster, kaleidoscopes are pretty easy to build. “Somebody-it’s never been proven who-either let it slip or heard the idea and thought, ‘I could do something similar.’” ![]() “ wasn’t a maker, so he had to approach different people about his idea,” she says. “People were ripping it off before he’d even gotten the patent through the door,” says Dawn Correia, a kaleidoscope historian and associate lecturer at the Open University. Image: WikiCommonsīrewster’s confidence wasn’t misplaced, but his faith in Britain’s early-19th-century patent system was. Kaleidoscopes may not be able to text, tweet, or hail a horse and buggy, but they were unputdownable in their day-and an analog omen of the mobile mania to come.ĭavid Brewster, early 1900s. And at the center of it all, a handheld source of endless visual entertainment. There’s an eccentric founder, a breakthrough idea, and a case of IP theft. But the story of the kaleidoscope, patented 200 years ago, has all the makings of a Silicon Valley spinoff. Legend has it that ancient Egyptians created pseudo-mirrors out of polished limestone slabs, so that people could dance in the resulting patterns of light. Humans have long been fascinated by reflective symmetry. “It came out beautifully,” she declared.) will coalesce into a form mathematically symmetrical and highly pleasing to the eye.” (Some 150 years later, “first lady of kaleidoscopes” Cozy Baker would demonstrate this point by aiming a teleidoscope-a kaleidoscope with a clear lens on the end-at a plate covered in egg yolks and cigarette ashes. “Any object, however ugly or irregular,” Brewster wrote in the filing, “ placed before the aperture…. ![]()
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