The first latin translation of Newton's "Optics"

NEWTON, Isaac.

Optice; sive de reflexionibus, refractionibus, inflexionibus & coloribus lucis libri tres.

London: Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, 1706.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #001673

4to (240 x 190 mm). [14], 1-348, 1-24, [2] 1-24, 21-43 [1] pp. 19 folding engraved plates, Ss1 a cancel leaf as usual. Contemporary full vellum, spine with old ink lettering and remnant of leather label (vellum little soiled), red-sprinkled edges. Text and plates generally crisp and clean with very little faint spotting, a few dampstains and wormholes in lower blank margin of first 10 leaves not affecting text, some worming to endpapers and title-page, tiny wormholes in lower margin of final pages and plates. Provenance: W. Heffer & Sons, Cambridge (small sticker to front pastedown). A very good copy with ample margins in untouched original binding. ----

Babson 137; Wallis 179, Norman 1589. - FIRST LATIN EDITION. The first edition of OPTICKS was printed two years earlier in English and without Newton's customary use of editorial assistance. He then employed Samuel Clarke to make a Latin translation with the addition of seven new Queries. At the end of the book are two mathematical treatises, DE QUADRATURA and ENUMERATIO LINEARUM TERTII ORDINIS, which Newton added to establish his priority over Leibniz in the invention of the calculus. Next to the PRINCIPIA, the OPTICKS stands as Newton's greatest work. Much of the a OPTICKS was written thirty years earlier and finally put into print in 1704, just a few months after Newton assumed the chair as President of the Royal Society. It summarized his discoveries and theories concerning light and color, the spectrum of sunlight, the degrees of refraction associated with different colors, the color circle, the invention of the reflecting telescope, the first workable theory of the rainbow, and interference effects in conjunction with Newton's rings. It expounds his corpuscular or emission theory of light.

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