![[NEWTON, Sir Isaac (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: Printed for Sam. Smith, and Benj. Walford, 1704.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2001/NYR/2001_NYR_09878_0091_000(033319).jpg?w=1)
细节
[NEWTON, Sir Isaac (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: Printed for Sam. Smith, and Benj. Walford, 1704.
Median 4o (236 x 190 mm). Collation: π2 (title in red and black, Advertisement signed I.N.); A-K4 (The First Book of Opticks. Part 1), 5 folding plates; L-S4 (First Book. Part II), 4 folding plates; Aa-Bb Dd-Gg4 (Second Book. Parts I and II), 2 folding plates; Hh-Pp4 (Second Book. Part III); Qq-Ss4 Tt4(1+1) Uu-Zz Aaa-Ddd4 Eee2 (Qq1 Third Book, Tt1+1r divisional title to Enumeratio linearum tertii ordinis, Yy2r divisional title to Tractatus de Quadratura Curvarum, Eee2v Errata to all parts), 1 folding plate to Book III of Opticks, 7 folding plates to Quadratura Curvarum. 181 leaves, 19 engravings of diagrams. (A few plate-headings shaved.) Contemporary English calf, sides of sprinkled and mottled panels, blind fillets and floral tools, spine gilt to match Morley's copy of Newton's Principia (see previous lot), red-sprinkled edges, original endpapers, (headcap chipped, joints beginning to crack); quarter-morocco box. Provenance: John Parker, 1st Earl of Morley (armorial bookplate), Fellow of the Royal Society, elected 1795 -- purchased from Maggs Bros., London, 7 October 1980.
FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE (without author's name, with the two treatises on calculus). The work contains Newton's papers on light and color, explaining his discoveries and theories of the spectrum of sunlight, the degrees of refraction associated with different colors, the color circle, the rainbow, and "Newton's rings," and his invention of the reflecting telescope. "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). The periodicity in Newton's rings led him to postulate that periodicity was a fundamental property of light waves. Nevertheless, Newton preferred the corpuscular theory of light, as it explained certain optical phenomena rather better.
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). EXTREMELY FINE COPY, fresh and unpressed. Babson 132; Dibner 148; Horblit 79b; PMM 172; Norman 1588.
Median 4o (236 x 190 mm). Collation: π2 (title in red and black, Advertisement signed I.N.); A-K4 (The First Book of Opticks. Part 1), 5 folding plates; L-S4 (First Book. Part II), 4 folding plates; Aa-Bb Dd-Gg4 (Second Book. Parts I and II), 2 folding plates; Hh-Pp4 (Second Book. Part III); Qq-Ss4 Tt4(1+1) Uu-Zz Aaa-Ddd4 Eee2 (Qq1 Third Book, Tt1+1r divisional title to Enumeratio linearum tertii ordinis, Yy2r divisional title to Tractatus de Quadratura Curvarum, Eee2v Errata to all parts), 1 folding plate to Book III of Opticks, 7 folding plates to Quadratura Curvarum. 181 leaves, 19 engravings of diagrams. (A few plate-headings shaved.) Contemporary English calf, sides of sprinkled and mottled panels, blind fillets and floral tools, spine gilt to match Morley's copy of Newton's Principia (see previous lot), red-sprinkled edges, original endpapers, (headcap chipped, joints beginning to crack); quarter-morocco box. Provenance: John Parker, 1st Earl of Morley (armorial bookplate), Fellow of the Royal Society, elected 1795 -- purchased from Maggs Bros., London, 7 October 1980.
FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE (without author's name, with the two treatises on calculus). The work contains Newton's papers on light and color, explaining his discoveries and theories of the spectrum of sunlight, the degrees of refraction associated with different colors, the color circle, the rainbow, and "Newton's rings," and his invention of the reflecting telescope. "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). The periodicity in Newton's rings led him to postulate that periodicity was a fundamental property of light waves. Nevertheless, Newton preferred the corpuscular theory of light, as it explained certain optical phenomena rather better.
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). EXTREMELY FINE COPY, fresh and unpressed. Babson 132; Dibner 148; Horblit 79b; PMM 172; Norman 1588.