  John Clark was inventor of the Eureka machine to generate hexameter Latin
verse. He labored for 13 years from 1832 to implement the device that could
compose at random over 26 million different lines of well-formed verse. This
paper proposes that Clark should be regarded as an early cognitive scientist.
Clark described his machine as an illustration of a theory of "kaleidoscopic
evolution" whereby the Latin verse is "conceived in the mind of the machine"
then mechanically produced and displayed. We describe the background to
automated generation of verse, the design and mechanics of Eureka, its
reception in London in 1845 and its place in the history of language generation
by machine. The article interprets Clark's theory of kaleidoscopic evolution in
terms of modern cognitive science. It suggests that Clark has not been given
the recognition he deserves as a pioneer of computational creativity.
