Opticks : $b or, A treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of lightNewton, Isaac
Science
Opticks : $b or, A treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light
Newton, Isaac
Optics -- Early works to 1800
So, for instance, having with a Lens 4-1/4 Inches broad, and two Prisms
on either hand 6-1/4 Feet distant from the Lens, made such a beam of
compounded Light; to examine the reason of the Colours made by Prisms, I
refracted this compounded beam of Light XY with another Prism HIK _kh_,
and thereby cast the usual Prismatick Colours PQRST upon the Paper LV
placed behind. And then by stopping any of the Colours _p_, _q_, _r_,
_s_, _t_, at the Lens, I found that the same Colour would vanish at the
Paper. So if the Purple _p_ was stopp'd at the Lens, the Purple P upon
the Paper would vanish, and the rest of the Colours would remain
unalter'd, unless perhaps the blue, so far as some purple latent in it
at the Lens might be separated from it by the following Refractions. And
so by intercepting the green upon the Lens, the green R upon the Paper
would vanish, and so of the rest; which plainly shews, that as the white
beam of Light XY was compounded of several Lights variously colour'd at
the Lens, so the Colours which afterwards emerge out of it by new
Refractions are no other than those of which its Whiteness was
compounded. The Refraction of the Prism HIK _kh_ generates the Colours
PQRST upon the Paper, not by changing the colorific Qualities of the
Rays, but by separating the Rays which had the very same colorific
Qualities before they enter'd the Composition of the refracted beam of
white Light XY. For otherwise the Rays which were of one Colour at the
Lens might be of another upon the Paper, contrary to what we find.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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