Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15849

    Theory of colours

    Date
    23 June 1673
    Creator
    Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727, British) , Natural philosopher
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p2
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 309mm
    width (page): 198mm
    Subject
    Physics
       > Optics
    Description
    Figures in a letter from Isaac Newton to Henry Oldenburg dated 23 June 1673.

    The figures illustrate an experiment to show that a compounded colour (white) is resolved into 'no more simple colours than those of which it is compounded'. This was printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 8, no. 96 (1673).

    There are copies at LBO/6/154 and LBC/6/175.
    Object history
    Printed as an inset woodcut at Isaac Newton, ‘Answer to the Foregoing Letter Further Explaining His Theory of Light and Colors, and Particularly That of Whiteness; together with His Continued Hopes of Perfecting Telescopes by Reflections Rather than Refractions’, Phil. Trans. vol. 8, no. 96 (July 1673) pp. 6087-92 (p. 6088).
    Related fellows
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727, British) , Natural philosopher
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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