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Dispute over who invented it

[edit]

On the reference desk, miscellaneous, someone has queried that Mr. Burnside invented it. Here's the discussion so far:

teleidoscope

I'm having a hard time trying to correct an entry. The inventor of the teleidoscope is definetely not John Lyon Burnside III. It's been around as long as the kaleidoscope has. Sir David Brewster describes it as the purest form of a kaleidoscope. Somebody is really trying to place Mr. Burnside as the inventor. He's everywhere! Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.57.19.253 (talk) 13:48, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'd be happy to help you, but you'll have to explain where you came to find out that information. Wikipedia has a verifiability policy that requires external sources for facts. If you "just know" that won't be good enough to change the article. i kan reed (talk) 14:44, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • follow-up: the sources I'm finding suggest that it was invented by Burnside. If you have a specific source that says otherwise, please contact me. In the future, requests for help editing wikipedia should go to the Help desk not the Reference desk. i kan reed (talk) 14:46, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You could also try the talk page of teleidoscope for assistance. Googlemeister (talk) 14:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Using the Google Ngram viewer, mentioned above, for teleidoscope for the English corpus gives an initial peak starting in about 1925. So maybe the OP is correct. See http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=teleidoscope&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 92.24.183.164 (talk) 19:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Except that following the Google links, we find that the 1920s teleidoscope was a telescopic camera lens and the 1950s one was a version of the eidophor projection system. Disambiguation time. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 21:15, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I followed those Google links, and you have omitted to mention that there are three teleidoscope-kaliedoscope references from 1960 and one from the New Yorker 1961: "The Teleidoscope — a tower of eyeful! Point it at what you will, see the world in limitless kaleidoscopic patterns". The teleidoscope article currently says that Mr Burnside applied for a patent in 1970, but does not say anything about him inventing it in 1960 or earlier. I do not have the time or patience to search through the online material linked from the Sir David Brewster article to see if it is described earlier. Another point is that although the kaliedoscope was invented and manufactured in the 19th. century, an article linked from the Mr. Burnside article says he was getting royalties from kaliedoscope manufacturers in the US, even though he obviously did not invent it. Since putting a lens on the end of a kaliedoscope (or putting mirrors inside a telescope) would be such a simple and fairly obvious thing for the Victorians to do, then it would not surprise me if they existed in the 19th. century. In fact you would not need any lenses, just looking through the mirrors alone may be sufficient. 2.97.218.142 (talk) 10:30, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

2.97.218.142 (talk) 11:16, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

David Brewster's book (1858) is here: http://books.google.com/books?id=3ANnAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=brewster+kaleidoscope&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UPhdUZDTKYiZyAHL94D4Bg&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAA

Burnside's patent is 3661439.

Whereas it is true that Burnside's patent was issued, it should not have. The 24 claims mentioned in the patent are all mentioned explicitly in Brewster's 1858 book, including using an objective lens, using an eyepiece lens, projecting the kaleidoscopic image, and using the kaleidoscope to view natural scenes and objects.

So it is true to say that Burnside applied for, and received, a patent, it is not true to say that he invented this gadget 50.73.46.101 (talk) 22:09, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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