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First edition, first issue, without the author's name on the title page, of this seminal study of light and colour, a major contribution to the development of vernacular scientific literature. Newton arrived at most of his unconventional ideas on colour by about 1668. When he expressed these theories in public, they provoked hostile reactions, particularly on the continent. As a result, he delayed the publication of Opticks - which was largely complete by 1692 - until many of his most fervent critics were dead. In what was probably a further defensive move, the work was first published in English rather than Latin. The first edition also includes two important mathematical treatises (omitted in later editions) describing Newton's invention of the fluxional calculus. These were intended to assert Newton's priority over Leibniz in its discovery. By about 1715, Opticks had established itself as a model for interweaving theory with quantitative experimentation. Newton's aim was not to "explain the properties of light by hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by reason and experiments" (p. 1). The work's greatest achievement was to show that colour is a mathematically definable property. Newton demonstrates that white light is a mixture of infinitely varied coloured rays (manifest in the rainbow and the spectrum) and that each ray is definable by the angle through which it is refracted on entering or leaving a given transparent medium. "Newton's Opticks did for light what his Principia had done for gravitation, namely place it on a scientific basis" (Babson). Provenance: the Tankerville Earls of Chillingham Castle, with their engraved armorial bookplate on the front pastedown. This may be that of Charles Bennet (1674-1722), 1st Earl, whose mother was the noted book collector Bridget Bennet. READ MORE Quarto (239 x 182 mm), pp. [iv], 144, 211 (= 213, two blank pages left unnumbered). Contemporary panelled calf, rebacked to style, spine ruled in blind, red morocco label lettered in gilt, raised bands, edges sprinkled red. With 19 folding engraved plates, tables in text, title page printed in red and black. Extremities restored. "Sheffield / Pat Strang", with his contemporary ink inscription on the front free endpaper. Contents crisp, infrequent finger soiling and foxing, short closed tears to outer margins of sig. A1 and plate XVII, damp stain to upper outer margins of 2H3-4, small holes to lower outer corners of 2Z2 and 3D4, tear to outer margin of plate II neatly repaired: a very good copy. Babson 132 (1); Dibner, Heralds of Science 148; ESTC T82019; Gray 174; Grolier/Horblit 79b; Norman 1588; Printing and the Mind of Man 172; Wallis 174.

Isaac Newton's 'Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light' was originally published in Latin as 'Optice: sive, De Reflexionibus, Refractionibus, Inflexionibus et Coloribus Lucis, Libri Tres'. This work is Newton's study of the behavior of light and color, detailing his experiments with prisms and the color spectrum.