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scope make the most of had been known since antiquity,
but Brewster attempted to patent the construction of a
device manufactured in the from of a brass tube and sold
as a toy (1819?). He foolishly entrusted his prototype
to a London instrument maker, and the idea was leaked
before Brewster had a sound patent in place. The result
was other people made a lot of money on the back of
Brewster’s invention.
The kaleidoscope is a toy which uses simple princi-
ples of refl ection noticed by Brewster when experiment-
ing in 1816 ... but.” Brewster defended his “brainchild”
in print, in a series of articles that appeared over the
next few years in encyclopaedias and journals [to bol-
ster his claim], culminating in the “grand” Treatise on
the Kaleidoscope (1858). A patent was “expensively”
obtained “which was negated when the enthusiasm of
the London instrument maker to whom he had entrusted
the prototype led to the principles of the device becom-
ing known.” His expensively produced brass tube was
copied—he wrote to his wife, ‘had I managed my pat-
ent rightly, I would have made one hundred thousand
pounds by it!’ (M. M. Gordon, The Home Life of Sir
David Brewster, 1869, 97) ... “fi rst example of a na-
tional / fashionable craze ... creation of markets in newly
industrialized society.
Brian Liddy
See Also: Daguerreotype; Calotype and Talbotype;
and Stereoscopy.
Further Reading
Duncan Macmillan, ‘Born Like Minerva: D O Hill and the Origins
of Photography,’ Mike Weaver, ed. British Photography in
the Nineteenth Century: The Fine Art Tradition, Cambridge
University Press, 1989.
BRIDGES, REVEREND GEORGE
WILSON (1788–1863)
English photographer
George Wilson Bridges was born to an old established
Essex family and like many eldest sons of the landed-
gentry trained to become a member of the clergy.
However, Bridges confounded his family by eloping to
Scotland with Elizabeth Raby Brooks, marrying on 24th
October 1815 at Gretna Green. The elopement and the
fact that their fi rst child, Henry, was conceived out of
wedlock appears to be the major cause of his banishment
to the colonies, becoming ostracized by his own family
and eventual marital breakdown.
In 1816 Bridges accepted an appointment from
the Governor General of Jamaica, William Montagu,
to become the rector of St Ann’s parish. Bridges was
highly paid during his incumbency, according to William
Henry Fox Talbot’s mother, Lady Elizabeth Fielding
(who knew Bridges); he was paid the then huge sum of
£3,000 per annum (almost certainly an exaggeration).
When in Jamaica Bridges wrote The Annals of Jamaica
(1828) which was a history of the island and slavery
and the British attitudes to it. Evidently Bridges was a
staunch supporter of the slave trade and the book caused
some controversy.
In 1834 Bridges’ wife suddenly left Jamaica taking
their son Henry and leaving Bridges to look after three
daughters (another daughter was at school in England)
and an infant son. Eight month’s later Bridges returned
to England to collect his eldest daughter and to try and
fi nd his wife. He stayed in Ireland with former Governor
of Jamaica, Lord Belmore, for nearly a year and then
returned to Jamaica. More tragedy was to follow when
all four young daughters were drowned during a boating
trip on New Year’s Day 1837. Deeply distressed after
this tragic event Bridges took his young son, William,
who survived the boating accident, to Upper Canada
(which was still a British Colony) where in 1837 he built
Wolf Tower, an octagonal wooden tower house on the
south shore of Rice Lake near Peterborough. In 1842
he left Canada with William, who was ill, for England.
They took fi rst ship they could fi nd from Quebec, which
took the pair to Palermo, Sicily; eventually returning to
England via Naples and Malta in 1843.
On his return Bridges became rector of Maisemore
near Gloucester and his son attended Maisemore
School. Talbot’s half-sister Caroline and her husband
Lord Valletort, the Third Earl of Mount Edgcumbe
(1797–1861) had a son, William Henry (1832–1917),
who attended Maisemore School and became a great
friend of Bridges’ son, William. It was at Maisemore
that Bridges fi rst saw a copy of The Pencil of Nature.
It was through the Mount-Edgcumbe family Bridges
became known to Talbot.
Keen to take up the new art of photography and to
travel to the East, Bridges sought advice in the new
art of photography from Talbot, who arranged for his
assistant Henneman to give him basic instruction as
well as providing him with the prepared paper on which
he would make his fi rst calotypes. Talbot hoped for a
return on his investment and Bridges agreed to send
back his studies to be printed at his Reading printing
works.
In January 1846 Bridges left Britain on his seven-year
photographic odyssey, stopping in Paris where he had a
camera made for him by the optician Charles Chevalier
(1804-1859). Chevalier had already made an instrument
for Calvert Richard Jones, who Bridges was to shortly to
meet and take instruction from in Malta. While in Paris
Bridges met the American merchant, poet and traveler
Richard K Haight who was also having a camera made
before traveling to England. Bridges, attracted by the
American’s plans for using the calotype in the United