Beschreibung:

SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727) Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. Also Two Treatises of the Species and Magnitude of Curvilinear Figures . London: Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, 1704. 4° (239 x 192mm). Title printed in red and black. 19 engraved folding plates. Woodcut diagrams and letterpress tables in the text. (Occasional light spotting or marking, light marginal browning, fore-edges of some plates lightly stained, margins of early leaves slightly chipped, title guarded in, some plates trimmed touching image). 20th-century calf in a contemporary style, early 18th-century calf laid down onto boards, spine gilt in compartments, gilt morocco lettering-piece in one, others densely gilt (boards a little scuffed, surface flaking). Provenance : occasional early annotations, one plate with neat hatching in an early hand. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE: 'MY DESIGN IN THIS BOOK IS NOT TO EXPLAIN THE PROPERTIES OF LIGHT BY HYPOTHESES, BUT TO PROPOSE AND PROVE THEM BY REASON AND EXPERIMENTS' (A1r). Newton's study of light and optics began while an undergraduate at Cambridge, and continued at his home in Lincolnshire during the plague years of 1665-66. He investigated the behaviour of light both experimentally and mathematically, concentrating on the spectrum of colours. Opticks contains Newton's summarisation of his discoveries and theories concerning light and colour, from his first published paper onward, and include his work on the spectrum of sunlight, the degrees of refraction associated with different colours, the colour circle, the rainbow, 'Newton's rings', and his invention of the reflecting telescope. 'The core of his work was the observation that the spectrum of colours (formed when a ray of light shines through a glass prism) is stretched along its axis, together with his experimental proof that rays of different colours are refracted to different extents. This causes the stretching, or dispersion, of the spectrum. All previous philosophers and mathematicians had been sure that white light is pure and simple, regarding colours as modifications or qualifications of the white. Newton showed experimentally that the opposite is true' (PMM). In contrast to the belief in the simple composition of natural white light, Newton demonstrated that natural white light is a compound of many pure elementary colours which could be separated and recombined at will. The book ends with two mathematical papers in Latin, published to establish Newton's prior claim over Leibniz to THE DISCOVERY OF CALCULUS. 'In a Letter written to Mr. Leibnitz in the Year 1676 and published by Dr. Wallis, I mentioned a Method by which I had found some general Theorems about squaring Curvilinear Figures, or comparing them with the Conic Sections ... And some Years ago I lent out a Manuscript containing such Theorems, and having since met with some Things copied out of it, I have on this Occasion made it publick' (Newton's 'Advertisement'). This copy is the first issue, with the title printed in red and black within a border and with the imprint, but without the author's name, and with the two treatises on calculus at the end of the work. Babson 132; Dibner Heralds 148; Grolier Science 79b; PMM 172; Norman 1588.