A version followed in which some of the objects and pieces of glass could move when the tube was rotated. An early version had pieces of colored glass and other irregular objects fixed permanently and was admired by some Members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, including Sir George Mackenzie who predicted its popularity. This triggered more experiments to find the conditions for the most beautiful and symmetrically perfect conditions. A while later he was impressed by the multiplied reflection of a bit of cement that was pressed through at the end of a triangular glass trough, which appeared more regular and almost perfectly symmetrical in comparison to the reflected objects that had been situated further away from the reflecting plates in earlier experiments. He forgot about it, but noticed a more impressive version of the effect during further experiments in February 1815. In 1814, Sir David Brewster conducted experiments on light polarization by successive reflections between plates of glass and first noted 'the circular arrangement of the images of a candle round a center, and the multiplication of the sectors formed by the extremities of the plates of glass'. Rotation of the cell causes motion of the materials, resulting in an ever-changing view being presented.Ĭoined by its Scottish inventor David Brewster, 'kaleidoscope' is derived from the Ancient Greek word καλός ( kalos), 'beautiful, beauty', εἶδος ( eidos), 'that which is seen: form, shape' and σκοπέω ( skopeō), 'to look to, to examine', hence 'observation of beautiful forms.' It was first published in the patent that was granted on July 10, 1817. These reflectors are usually enclosed in a tube, often containing on one end a cell with loose, colored pieces of glass or other transparent (and/or opaque) materials to be reflected into the viewed pattern.

For other uses, see Kaleidoscope (disambiguation).Ī kaleidoscope ( / k ə ˈ l aɪ d ə s k oʊ p/) is an optical instrument with two or more reflecting surfaces (or mirrors) tilted to each other at an angle, so that one or more (parts of) objects on one end of these mirrors are shown as a regular symmetrical pattern when viewed from the other end, due to repeated reflection.

Colorful kaleidoscope