permission to communicate the contents to their common friend
John Collins (1624–1683), a mathematician of no mean order.
Barrow did this on the 31st of July 1669, but kept the name of
the author a secret, and merely told Collins that he was a friend
staying at Cambridge, who had a powerful genius for such
matters. In a subsequent letter on the 20th of August, Barrow
expressed his pleasure at hearing the favourable opinion which
Collins had formed of the paper, and added, “the name of the
author is Newton, a fellow of our college, and a young man,
who is only in his second year since he took the degree of master
of arts, and who, with an unparalleled genius (eximio quo est
acumine), has made very great progress in this branch of
mathematics.” Shortly afterwards Barrow resigned his chair, and was
instrumental in securing Newton’s election as his successor.
Newton was elected Lucasian professor on the 29th of October
1669. It was his duty as professor to lecture at least once a week
in term time on some portion of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy,
geography, optics, statics, or some other mathematical subject,
and also for two hours in the week to allow an audience to any
student who might come to consult with the professor on any
difficulties he had met with. The subject which Newton chose
for his lectures was optics. The success which attended his
researches in optics must have been great, although the results
were known only through his own oral lectures, until he presented
an account of them to the Royal Society in the spring of 1672.
On the 21st of December 1671 he was proposed as a candidate
for admission into the Royal Society by Dr Seth Ward, bishop
of Salisbury, and on the 11th of January 1672 he was elected a
fellow of the Society. At the meeting at which Newton was
elected a description of a reflecting telescope which he had
invented was read, and “it was ordered that a letter should be
written by the secretary to Mr Newton to acquaint him of his
election into the Society, and to thank him for the communication
of his telescope, and to assure him that the Society would take
care that all right should be done him with respect to this
invention.”
In his reply to the secretary on the 18th of January 1672, Newton writes:—
“I desire that in your next letter you would inform me for what time the society continue their weekly meetings; because, if they continue them for any time, I am purposing them to be considered of and examined an account of a philosophical discovery, which induced me to the making of the said telescope, and which I doubt not but will prove much more grateful than the communication of that instrument being in my judgment the oddest if not the most considerable detection which hath hitherto been made into the operations of nature.”
The promise here made was fulfilled in a communication which Newton addressed to Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, on the 6th of February 1672, and which was read before the society two days afterwards. The whole is printed in No. 80 of the Philosophical Transactions.
After explaining his discovery of the composition of white light, he proceeds:—
“When I understood this, I left off my aforesaid Glass works; for I saw, that the perfection of Telescopes was hitherto limited, not so much for want of glasses truly figured according to the prescriptions of Optick Authors (which all men have hitherto imagined), as because that Light itself is a Heterogeneous mixture of differently refrangible Rays. So that, were a glass so exactly figured as to collect any one sort of rays into one point, it could not collect those also into the same point, which having the same Incidence upon the same Medium are apt to suffer a different refraction. Nay, I wondered, that seeing the difference of refrangibility was so great, as I found it, Telescopes should arrive to that perfection they are now at.”
He then points out why “the object-glass of any Telescope cannot collect all the rays which come from one point of an object, so as to make them convene at focus in less room than in a circular space, whose diameter is the 50th part of the Diameter of its Aperture: which is an irregularity some hundreds of times greater, than a circularly figured Lens, of so small a section as the Object-glasses of long Telescopes are, would cause by the unfitness of its figure, were Light uniform.” He adds: “This made me take reflections into consideration, and finding them regular, so that the Angle of Reflection of all sorts of Rays was equal to their Angle of Incidence; I understood, that by their mediation Optick instruments might be brought to any degree of perfection imaginable, provided a Reflecting substance could be found, which would polish as finely as Glass, and reflect as much light, as glass transmits, and the art of communicating to it a Parabolick figure be also attained. But these seemed very great difficulties, and I have almost thought them insuperable, when I further considered, that every irregularity in a reflecting superficies makes the rays stray 5 or 6 times more out of their due course, than the like irregularities in a refracting one; so that a much greater curiosity would be here requisite, than in figuring glasses for Refraction.
“Amidst these thoughts I was forced from Cambridge by the Intervening Plague, and it was more than two years before I proceeded further. But then having thought on a tender way of polishing, proper for metall, whereby, as I imagined, the figure also would be corrected to the last; I began to try, what might be effected in this kind, and by degrees so far perfected an Instrument (in the essential parts of it like that I sent to London), by which I could discern Jupiters 4 Concomitants, and shewed them divers times to two others of my acquaintance. I could also discern the Moon-like phase of Venus, but not very distinctly, nor without some niceness in disposing the Instrument.
“From that time I was interrupted till this last Autumn, when I made the other. And as that was sensibly better than the first (especially for Day-Objects), so I doubt not, but they will be still brought to a much greater perfection by their endeavours, who, as you inform me, are taking care about it at London.”
After a remark that microscopes seem as capable of improvement as telescopes, he adds: “I shall now proceed to acquaint you with another more notable difformity in its Rays, wherein the Origin of Colour is unfolded: Concerning which I shall lay down the Doctrine first, and then, for its examination, give you an instance or two of the Experiments, as a specimen of the rest. The Doctrine you will find comprehended and illustrated in the following propositions:
“1. As the Rays of light differ in degrees of Refrangibility, so they also differ in their disposition to exhibit this or that particular colour. Colours are not Qualifications of Light, derived from Refractions, or Reflections of natural Bodies (as ’tis generally believed), but original and connate properties, which in divers Rays are divers. Some Rays are disposed to exhibit a red colour and no other; some a yellow and no other, some a green and no other, and so of the rest. Nor are there only Rays proper and particular to the more eminent colours, but even to all their intermediate gradations.
“2. To the same degree of Refrangibility ever belongs the same colour, and to the same colour ever belongs the same degree of Refrangibility. The least Refrangible Rays are all disposed to exhibit a Red colour, and contrarily those Rays, which are disposed to exhibit a Red colour, are all the least Refrangible: So the most refrangible Rays are all disposed to exhibit a deep Violet Colour, and contrarily those which are apt to exhibit such a violet colour are all the most Refrangible.
“And so to all the intermediate colours in a continued series belong intermediate degrees of refrangibility. And this Analogy 'twixt colours, and refrangibility is very precise and strict; the Rays always either exactly agreeing in both, or proportionally disagreeing in both.
“3. The species of colour, and degree of Refrangibility proper to any particular sort of Rays, is not mutable by Refraction, nor by Reflection from natural bodies, nor by any other cause, that I could yet observe. When any one sort of Rays hath been well parted from those of other kinds, it hath afterwards obstinately retained its colour, notwithstanding my utmost endeavours to change it. I have refracted it with Prismes, and reflected it with Bodies, which in Day-light were of other colours; I have intercepted it with the coloured film of Air interceding two compressed plates of glass, transmitted it through coloured Mediums, and through Mediums irradiated with other sorts of Rays, and diversly terminated it; and yet could never produce any new colour out of it. It would by contracting or dilating become more brisk, or faint, and by the loss of many Rays, in some cases very obscure and dark; but I could never see it changed in specie.
“Yet seeming transmutations of Colours may be made, where there is any mixture of divers sorts of Rays. For in such mixtures, the component colours appear not, but, by their mutual allaying each other constitute a midling colour.”
Further on, after some remarks on the subject of compound colours, be says: “I might add more instances of this nature, but I shall conclude with this general one, that the Colours of all natural Bodies have no other origin than this, that they are variously qualified to reflect one sort of light in greater plenty then another. And this I have experimented in a dark Room by illuminating those bodies with uncompounded light of divers colours. For by that means any body may be made to appear of any colour. They have there no appropriate colour, but ever appear of the colour of the light cast upon them, but yet with this difference, that they are most brisk and vivid in the light of their own day-light colour. Minium appeareth there of any colour indifferently, with which 'tis illustrated, jut yet most luminous in red, and so Bise appeareth indifferently of any colour with which 'tis illustrated, but yet most luminous in blew. And therefore minium reflecteth Rays of any colour, but most copiously those indued with red; and consequently when illustrated with day-light, that is with all sorts of Rays promiscuously
