When I was a child there wasn’t a whole lot of money. The most valuable thing in our home, according to my Mother, was a set of 1913 Encyclopedia Britannica’s. My brother and I were always encouraged to use them to improve our knowledge. I remember the day she came home from shopping to find us playing poker. When Mom got upset, we told her that we had used the Britannica’s to learn how and reminded her that she’d told us to use them.
Since my brother was a bit older than me, he usually lead things, but one of the times I got to learn what I wanted to was when we taught ourselves how to make a Kaleidoscope.
A kaleidoscope is a tube of mirrors containing loose colored beads, pebbles or other small colored objects. You look in one end and light enters the other end, reflecting off the mirrors. Typically there are two rectangular mirrors. Setting the mirrors at 45° makes eight duplicate images of the objects, six images at 60°, and four images at 90°. As you spin the tube, the tumbling of the colored objects shows the viewer varying colors and patterns. Any arbitrary pattern of objects shows up as a beautiful symmetric pattern because of the reflections in the mirrors. A two-mirror model yields a pattern or patterns isolated against a solid black background, while a three-mirror (closed triangle) model yields a pattern that fills the entire field. They are very beautiful patterns.
We made ours from a paper towel tube, a mirror from Mom’s compact which we carefully broke to glue inside the tube, some coloured plastic tiddlywinks discs and a couple plastic circles which I can’t remember where we found them.
Modern kaleidoscopes are made of brass tubes, stained glass, wood, steel, gourds and almost anything an artist can sculpt or manipulate. The part of the kaleidoscope which holds objects to be viewed is called an object chamber or cell. Object cells may contain almost any material. Sometimes the object cell is filled with liquid so the items float and move through the object cell with slight movement from the person viewing.
The ancient Greeks made Kaleidoscopes but Sir David Brewster rediscovered them in 1816 while conducting experiments on light polarization; Brewster patented it in 1817. His initial design was a tube with pairs of mirrors at one end, and pairs of translucent disks at the other, and beads between the two. Initially intended as a science tool, the kaleidoscope was quickly copied as a toy. Brewster believed he would make money from his popular invention; however, a fault in the wording of his patent allowed others to copy his invention. The best laid plans, eh?
In America, Charles Bush popularized the kaleidoscope which sold at a cost of $2.00 each. Today, these early products often sell for over $1,000. Our attempt was never in that class.
A teleidoscope is a kind of kaleidoscope. Unlike other kaleidoscopes, teleidoscopes have a lens and an open view, so they can be used to form kaleidoscopic patterns from objects outside the instrument, rather than from items installed as part of it. The lens at the end of the tube is not an optical requirement, but protects the internals of the teleidoscope from objects which a child might insert. A spherical ball lens is often used. An advantage of using a sphere is that it will not press flat against the object being viewed. That means even more beautiful patterns
If you’d like to try having some fun yourself or with the kids or grandkids, click here for instructions on how to make your own.
