from Sir David Brewster, The Kaleidoscope—Its History, Theory, and Construction with its Application to the Fine and Useful Arts, 1858
Rational Recreations and Philosophical Instruments
At first, I found it odd that the kaleidoscope is grouped, along with telescopes, microscopes and the camera obscura, in the class of philosophical instruments. David Brewster, who invented and named of the kaleidoscope in 1816, was also deeply fascinated with photography and natural magic. Magic tricks such as ventriloquism were part of forms of entertainment termed “rational recreations” in the eighteenth century. But calling a “toy” a philosophical instrument seemed to be a stretch. The term instrument implies some sort of utility. I was curious what its inventor had to say. Brewster suggested that the kaleidoscope could be a boon to the decorative arts:
In the decoration of public halls and galleries, there is no species of ornament more appropriate than those which consist in the combination of single figures, or of groups of heads, which are either directly or metaphorically associated with the history of the object of the institution. Regular historical paintings on the ceiling of a room are quite incompatible with the symmetrical character of a public gallery. If they are well executed, they can never be seen to advantage, and therefore their individual effect is lost, while, from their very nature, they cannot possibly produce that general effect as ornament which good taste imperiously requires. In employing regularly combined groups of figures, there is sufficient scope given to the powers of the artist, while systematic arrangement of his work prevents it from interfering with the general character of the place which it is to embellish. (142)
Symmetry was the defining characteristic of beauty for Brewster; this neoclassical conception puts Brewster at odds with the romantic spirit of wildness. His early experiments with mirrors and polarized light produced interesting effects, but they were flawed in respect to symmetry. His design of 1814, though promising, did not satisfy his ideal. Rational, for Brewster, carried the connotations of regular and repeatable. However, Brewster’s discovery of the power of repetition seems almost like a neo-classical Warhol:
The effects which the Kaleidoscope develops, when applied to the representations of living objects, will, we have no doubt, give very great surprise to those who have not previously examined them. In order to enable the reader to form some notion of them, we have given, in the annexed plate [51] a series of reduced figures, taken principally from the antique. In order to separate an individual figure from the rest, we have only to cut an opening of nearly the same size in a piece of paper, and lay it upon the surface of the plate, so as to conceal all the adjoining figures, and permit the required figure to be seen through the aperture. By applying a Kaleidoscope, in which the inclination of the mirrors does not exceed 30 degrees, the figure will be combined into a fine pattern, exhibiting, perhaps, the head and a part of the body in every sector; while the hands, or the lower extremities, are thrown into the stiff part of the design. The singular case and grace with which it connects itself with the general picture, produces a new effect, which, so far as we can learn, no artist ever attempted to produce. (142)
It is possible to conjecture that the point of view of Brewster is deeply tied to the emergence of Darwinism—a search for a sort of sequential connection—as well as maintaining the symmetry of a more neoclassical view. Brewster was a staunch creationist, but he adopts the rhetoric of progression in his descriptions of this device.
The impact of the kaleidoscope seems to me much greater than its recurrence as a fad in both the early and late nineteenth century. It presented a different way of looking at things in much the same way that the microscope, telescope, and camera obscura did. Perhaps granting it stature as a “philosophical instrument” isn’t so odd after all.
Maybe there should be more Kaleidoscopin’ [mp3 track available for a limited time from Tom Verlaine’s The Wonder— usual disclaimers: only if you click through from this domain, for educational purposes only, if a rash develops discontinue use, etc.].
