Opticks

This volume, printed in 1717, is the first English edition of Newton’s Opticks. The publication of Opticks represented a major contribution to science. Opticks is a study of the nature of light and colour and the various phenomena of diffraction, which Newton called the "inflexion" of light. In this book Newton sets forth in full his experiments, first reported in 1672, on dispersion, or the separation of light into a spectrum of its component colours. Newton shows how colours arise from selective absorption, reflection, or transmission of the various component parts of the incident light. His experiments on these topics and on the problems brought the subject of optics to new level.