Imagine, you are a child living in the early 1900s. You are lucky, because your father has a good job and you live in a nice house and you even have a tutor! Even more lucky, your have lots of things to play with. You want something new though. You saw a beautiful kaleidoscope for sale in the toy shop, and you have been begging your parents to buy it for you. Mummy says if you are very good and do well in your lessons, you can have it as a reward.
When I took this kolorscope kaleidoscope to show the children, they were fascinated. They have seen kaleidoscopes before, but they have never seen one so old. They were surprised to find that kaleidoscopes had been around since the 1800s, and were really interested in learning more about how kaleidoscopes work. The children particularly enjoyed looking at the kaleidoscope because it's end is loose, so they could see not only the 'shiny bits in the end', but some of the inner workings. They were particularly surprised to see that the 'shiny bits' were just broken pieces of coloured glass!
The kaleidoscope is a very popular toy, which most children recognise. Surprisingly though, the kaleidoscope itself was only invented about 200 years ago, relatively recently when compared to many other common toys! The first kaleidoscope was invented by a Scottish inventor, Sir David Brewster. David Brewster was an extraordinary man, a child prodigy who built his first telescope when he was 10 and went to University when he was only 12 years old! He was a scientist who was particularly interested in light and how it worked (his fields were optics and the physics of light). He invented the first ever kaleidoscope in 1816, and it became very popular. Unfortunately for Brewster, a problem with his patents meant that he never saw a huge amount of the money made by his invention. During the Victorian age, the kaleidoscope was very popular, a novelty to be found in many peoples homes. The most influential and famous of the kaleidoscopes was made by Charles Bush, who improved on Brewsters original design. If you would like to learn more about the history of kaleidoscopes, click here.
So how does the kaleidoscope work? Kaleidoscopes are tubes which use a combination of light and mirrors to reflect different patterns. We look through one end of the kaleidoscope and light enters the tube through the other end. The end where light enters also has objects inside (or sometimes outside on a wheel) and the light illuminates these, as well as reflecting off the mirrors inside the kaleidoscope itself. When the objects are illuminated, the mirrors reflect them, and because there are more than one mirror, the mirrors also reflect each other. This means that abstract patterns are created, which we can see when we look through the kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscopes are quite complex to explain, so this is only a very basic explanation. If you would like a more complete explanation, click here.
