Rare book: Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light; Also, Two Treatises of the Species and Magnitude of Curvilinear Figures by Isaac Newton. First edition, first issue, with title in red and black, within a double-rule border and without author's name. London: Printed for Sam. Smith, and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, 1704. Hardcover bound in contemporary paneled calf, rebacked, 8 x 9.75, featuring 19 folding engraved plates (plate 5 torn at fold, plate 6 with corner torn away affecting image, several shaved), second book with page 120 misnumbered as 112. The title pages bears the ownership signature of John Ussher, and the bookplate of Irish naturalist John Vandeleur Stewart is affixed to the front pastedown. In good to very good condition, with numerous notes, diagrams, and underlining in pencil throughout, aforementioned rebacked binding and tears to plates, naive repairs to the front gutter, and some soiling to textblock and endpapers.
A foundational work in the field of optics, Isaac Newton's Opticks explores the nature of light and color, presenting his experiments and theories on how light behaves. Unlike his earlier work, the Principia, which used a more deductive approach, Opticks is largely experimental and inductive. Newton's study includes detailed descriptions of his experiments with prisms and lenses, leading to the conclusion that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors. The work also delves into the phenomena of diffraction and interference, which were crucial to the development of wave theory in later years. The work is notable for containing Newton's first mathematical papers in print, and for giving the first full explanation of the rainbow, complete with related diagrams. Like Galileo, Newton decided to publish this text in his native vernacular rather than Latin, the language of scholarship; an enlarged Latin edition would be published two years later. Opticks was Newton's second major book on physical science and it is considered one of the Scientific Revolution's three major works on optics.
