The Kaleidoscope: fun for all ages

Inspired by one. 

Inset Kaleidoscope by Lucy

That's all it takes for The Children's School to break out the box of vintage optical toys! Perfect timing with our spring sunshine. Here's a few of our gems and their fantastic explosions of color...

1960's ZOOSCOPE made in England

Vintage Optical Viewer, with changeable color lenses, made in Japan
by よしにのかかく

1960's Kaleidoscope made by Galt Toys in England

The Karascope:
"The Karascope creates an optical fantasy in a tube by polarizing, refracting and reflecting light. There is no colored glass in the Karascope, only the spectral colors of light itself.
Ordinary white light which vibrates in all directions is polarized along one plane when it passes through the base of the tube. The light then enters clear, colorless pieces of birefringent material and is reorganized by the eyepiece to produce the startling colors that you see. The patterns, unlike those in a kaleidoscope, are asymmetrical.






Hold the Karascope toward the light, rotate the base, and the image changes. A twist of the eyepiece alters the colors of the image and causes the pattern to swirl to or from the eye. The spectrum also shifts as the Karascope is pointed toward different light sources".
 -Designed by Judith Karelitz, 1978 New York City.























Jupiter Scope: The Space-Age Prism by SolarGraphics 1981 Berkeley, CA

Rainbow Disk LOOK! Sticks to windows and creates colorful prisms.
The Magic Mirror Book by Marion Walter 1971 (with mirror intact)
Assorted PrismaScopes

Now let's play!