This term is created from the Greek words kalos (beautiful), eidos (form), and skopeo (to look at). The kaleidoscope was invented by Sir David Brewster, a Scotsman who worked on the idea for several years before patenting it. The first mention in English is found in Brewster’s patent application of 1817. The charming cylindrical contraption filled with colourful objects that are refracted in mirrors over and over in moving symmetrical patterns, as well as the elegant Greek compound that became its name, caught on very quickly indeed. Lord Byron’s publisher, John Murray, sent one to the British Romanticist as a present the following year, writing “I send you a very well-constructed kaleidoscope, a newly-invented toy”. In 1822, these mesmerizing novelties were already being mass produced and given to children as gifts in the United States.
Dr. David Brewster was a scientist who focused his research on the diffraction of light and whose work was used in the development of stethoscopes and lighthouses. He also played a major role in popularising the huge scientific advances that were being made at the time in the magazine he founded, the Edinburgh Journal of Science, and with the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he was a founding member. But in spite of his other claims to fame, it is the kaleidoscope for which he is remembered. Some 40 years after he invented the perennially entrancing device, he wrote a major work on the subject called The Kaleidoscope: Its History, Theory and Construction: with Its Application to the Fine and Useful Arts. Fittingly enough, the treatise was published by John Murray, who had been familiar with the kaleidoscope since its birth.
Today, a kaleidoscope can still be had for a great sum or a tiny one: children’s toys are still created around the world from inexpensive materials, while handmade glass kaleidoscopes, carefully designed by artists and craftsmen, are pricey treasures. And in locations as diverse as San Diego, California and Inhotim, Brazil, you can even look through huge “landscape kaleidoscopes,” which instead of rotating internal objects, turn the surrounding countryside – or cityscape – into a fascinating, fractured vista.
