3-028-317 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Newton Investigating Light," by J. A. Houston, R.S.A., 1870. 'The data for Sir Isaac Newton's conclusions respecting the composite nature of light were founded...upon a simple experiment with a prism - an experiment which a child might have made; and not more likely to lead to a great discovery, unless reasoned upon by a philosopher, than was the fall of an apple likely to suggest the great law of gravitation which sustains and regulates the universe. The modus operandi of the experiment is shown in the well-considered and well and effectively painted picture by Mr. Houston, which we have engraved from the present exhibition at Burlington House. The shutters of a room are closed on a sunshiny day, but a single beam is admitted through a small orifice; a prism of glass is placed in this beam, and the light passing through it is decomposed or detached into its constituents as it falls on any object within the room, because it is seen that the beam is composed of rays of different degrees of refrangibility, according to the colours into which they resolve themselves...the artist has indicated some of the other profound discoveries and labours of our great philosopher, by the telescope, books, and so forth...in the background of the picture'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.