Experiments on the nature of colour, 1704.

Page of diagrams from Newton's 'Opticks' (1704) containing figures 13 to 16. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) found that by refracting light through a prism white light was dispersed into its constituent colours. If one colour was selected and refracted through a second prism, no further colours were introduced, showing that colours were a property of light and not the prism. Newton's discovery that it was imposible to focus an image distinctly using a single lens led him to build the world's first reflecting telescope.