Letter from Newton to Henry Oldenburg, dated 21 May 1672

Author: Isaac Newton

Source: MS Add. 3976, ff. 14r-15v, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, UK

Additional Information
- Notes on the Electronic Edition
  - You are currently reading the diplomatic version of this text. Diplomatic transcriptions offer a detailed representation of the document with minimal editorial intervention. All deletions and additions are rendered in the text and abbreviations have not been expanded. Switching to the normalized view of this text will hide 10 deletions, silently include 5 additions and apply 21 editorial regularizations.
- Revision History
  - 1 January 2001
    - Catalogue information compiled by Rob Iliffe, Peter Spargo & John Young
  - 29 September 2011
    - Catalogue exported to teiHeader by Michael Hawkins
  - 29 April 2020
    - Transcribed by Robert Ralley.
- Download NATP00392.xml and schema (advanced users only)

<14r>

May 21. 1672. Trin. Coll.

S^r

Tis now more then a fortnight since in answer to yo^r last letter May 2^d, I returned you some considerations on M. Cassegrains designe for refining y^e Telescope &|A|nd to yo^r suggestion that when my an{g}|s|wer to M^r Hooks & Father Pardies Objections should be printed, the names of the Objectors, especially if they desired, might be omitted; I told you that it was indifferent to me whether they were printed w^th or without the Authors names, I being concerned in the matter of those objections without respect to their persons. But yet I understood not yo^r desire of leaving out M^r Hooks name, if because the contents would discover their Author unlesse the greatest ꝑt of them should be omitted & the rest put into a new Method w^thout having any respect, to y^e Hypothesis of colours described in his Micrographia. And then they would in effect become new objections & reque|i|re another Answer then what I have written. And I know not whether I should dissatisfy them that expect my answer to these that are already sent to me.

But yet upon the receipt of yo^r letter I deferred the sending those things w^ch are already writ I intended, & have determined to send you alone a part of what I prepared, as I told you, to accompany my Answer; for y^e sake of w^ch I have hitherto suspended it. The subject of this discourse is the Phænomena of Plated Bodies, concerning w^ch I shall by experiments first show how according to their severall thicknesses they reflect or transmit the rays indued w^th severall colours, & then consider the relation w^ch these this|n| transparent Plates have to y^e parts of other naturall Bodies, in order to a fuller understanding of the cases of their colours also. And this I purpose to send becis|u|se it most properly apperteines to y^e former discourse of light, being a declaration of the different reflectibility of the severall sorts of rays, as that was of their different refrangibility. I onely expect yo^r answer to my last & this, & then my next may conteine yo^r ans this Subject. In the meane time I rest

Yo^r humble Servant

I. Newton

<15v>

These

To Henry Oldenburg Es at his house about the middle of the old Pall-Maile in Westminster

London.

Rec. May 22. 72.

Answ. May 23.

Answ Wrote again May june, and pressed His Answ. to Hook putting him in mind of {his} premiss and desiring to acknowledge tardies Candid return.