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By Root 2007 0

and their families at long odds for an even smaller chance of success than the regime seemed to promise. "If the private history of schemers could be gone into," William Robert Grove would soon suggest, then all would see that "the delusive ignis fatuus of a patent" constituted "a delusion, more honourable, but not less exciting, than that of the gambler."6 In this respect patenting became part of a much wider debate in the nineteenth century about the proclaimed "demoralization" of industrial society, much of which employed the language of gambling.

At any rate, Brewster obtained his patent. But, as his daughter put it, "as it often has happened in this country, the invention was quickly pirated." It seems-at least, this is what Brewster thought- that the craftsman he had employed to manufacture the device took a sample to the major London artisans to solicit orders. They immediately made versions for themselves, perhaps assuming a customary prerogative to do so. And so the design leaked out. At that point, countless "tinmen" and "glaziers" began to make component parts for kaleidoscopes "in order to evade the patent," while others simply manufactured and sold entire instruments in blissful ignorance that a patent even existed. Much to its inventor's chagrin, it came to be widely assumed that the patent itself had been declared void. Brewster guessed that less than i percent of the kaleidoscopes sold in those heady months were produced under his patent and therefore "constructed upon scientific principles." As a result, not only had he been deprived of a fortune, but of the millions who had seen a kaleidoscope, "there is perhaps not an hundred who have any idea of the principles upon which it is constructed, who are capable of distinguishing the spurious from the real instrument, or who have sufficient knowledge of its principles for applying it to the numerous branches of the useful and ornamental arts." For decades he would continue to complain?

Brewster's experience with the kaleidoscope had ramifications beyond his own pocket. Lacking a university or clerical position, he depended on diverse and often unreliable sources of income, such as the £ioo or so he received for each issue of the Edinburghjournal of Science.8 Had his patent held, he could have escaped at one bound the chains of drudgery and worse that held him down-his interminable editorship of the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia embroiled him in potentially ruinous lawsuits. He could have attained the leisure and freedom of action of the gentleman. A breached patent blocked his path to advancement into the ranks of gentility His experience, he therefore decided, indicated the existence of an enormous social problem that needed to be solved if society itself were not to atrophy.

Brewster does seem to have met with all the misfortunes that reputedly bedeviled nineteenth-century inventors. His patent specification was called into question; his workman purportedly leaked details to others; and the prospect of going to law was so intimidating that he simply declined to defend his patent at all. All these experiences were reportedly widespread. He resolved that something must be done. By 1821 Brewster was already instrumental in forming two associations in Edinburgh, a Society ofArts (named after London's own Society), dedicated to promoting Scottish inventors, and a School of Arts, which was to be the first of Britain's many Mechanics' Institutes. Throughout the 182os, he continued to use his editorship of the Edinburgh Journal of Science to promote calls for state support for inventors and men of science. And at the end of the decade, when Charles Babbage published his Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, Brewster not only helped behind the scenes to compile its arguments but sallied forth in public as Babbage's most prominent supporter. Babbage's book appeared in the context of Parliament's first major investigation of the patents regime - an investigation that revealed widespread disillusionment but resulted in no action. Brewster told Babbage that he