iriscope

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  1. A philosophical toy for exhibiting prismatic colors. See the extract. It [the iriscope] consists of a plate of highly polished black glass, having its surface smeared with a solution of fine soap and subsequently dried by rubbing it clean with a piece of chamois-leather. If the breath is directed through a glass tube upon a glass surface thus prepared, the vapor is deposited in brilliant colored rings, the outermost of which is black, while the innermost has various colors, or no color at all, according to the quantity of vapor deposited. The colors in these rings, when seen by common light, correspond with Newton's reflected rings, or those which have black centers, the only difference being that in the plate of vapor, which is thickest in the middle, the rings in the iriscope have black circumferences. Sir David Brewster, Philosophical Transactions (1841), p. 43.

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  1. from Greek ἰρις, a rainbow, + σκοπεῖν, view.
 

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