wasteofo2
Jan3-04, 08:11 PM
This is a passage of Isaac Newton’s journal pertaining to optics, taken from the book Isaac Newton, The Last Sorcerer by Michael White, page 61.
"I took a bodkin [from the illustration accompanying this entry in the notebook, astonishingly, this appears to be a small dagger similar to an envelope knife], and put it between my eye and the bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye with the end of it (so as to make the curvature in my eye) there appeared several white, dark and coloured circles. Where circles were plainest when I continued to rub my eye with the point of the bodkin, but if I held my eye and the bodkin still though I continued to press my eye with it yet the circles would grow faint often disappear until I resumed them by moving my eye or the bodkin."
"I took a bodkin [from the illustration accompanying this entry in the notebook, astonishingly, this appears to be a small dagger similar to an envelope knife], and put it between my eye and the bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye with the end of it (so as to make the curvature in my eye) there appeared several white, dark and coloured circles. Where circles were plainest when I continued to rub my eye with the point of the bodkin, but if I held my eye and the bodkin still though I continued to press my eye with it yet the circles would grow faint often disappear until I resumed them by moving my eye or the bodkin."