Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Lot 168

[NEWTON (ISAAC)]
Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light, FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, 1704

24 June 2015, 11:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £16,250 inc. premium

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

[NEWTON (ISAAC)]

Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light, FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, title printed in red and black, 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 112, numerous notes, diagrams and underlining in pencil, contemporary panelled calf, rebacked, upper cover detached [Babson 132; PMM 164], 4to (240 x 185mm.), Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, 1704

Footnotes

"Newton's Optics did for light what his Principia had done for gravitation, namely, placed it on a scientific basis" (Babson, quoting Prof. E.W. Brown of Yale University). Although Newton began writing the work in the 1670s, he delayed publishing it until after Hooke's death, to avoid repeating previous controversies he had faced. In addition to expounding Newton's theory of the colours of light, the work was also notable for containing the author's first mathematical papers in print, and for giving the first full explanation of the rainbow. Like Galileo, Newton decided to publish this text in his native vernacular rather than Latin, the language of scholarship.

Provenance: John Ussher, ownership inscription on title; John Vandeleur Stewart, of Rock Hill, County Donegal, bookplate.

Additional information

Bid now on these items

A Presentation Copy of Kennedy's First Book to Spencer Tracy. Kennedy, John F. 1917-1963. Why England Slept. New York: Wilfred Funk, Inc., 1940.

Signed to Spencer Tracy 1952 Hemingway, Ernest. 1899-1961. The Old Man and the Sea, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.

CORNELIUS, MATTHEWS, editor. 1817-1889. The Enchanted Moccasins and Other Legends of the American Indians.

CALEPINO, AMBROGIO. 1435-1511. [Dictionarium.] Calepinus Ad librum. Mos est putidas.... Venice: Peter Liechtenstein, January 3, 1509.

HEARN, LAFCADIO. 1850-1904. [Japanese Fairy Tales.] Philadelphia: Macrae-Smith, [But Tokyo: T. Hasegawa,] [c.1931].

HEMINGWAY, ERNEST. 1899-1961. PUTNAM, SAMUEL, translator. Kiki's Memoirs. Paris: Sign of the Black Manikin, 1930.