?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
[NEWTON, ISAAC, Sir.] Opticks. 19 folding engraved plates. [4], 144; 211 [i. e., 209], [1] pages. 2 parts in one volume. 4to, 247x192 mm, contemporary panelled calf, recased with spine ends restored, lettering piece off, endpapers renewed; short repaired clean tear in blank lower margin of title and next leaf, faint narrow stain in title gutter and adhesive traces on verso, plate facing page 122 in first part trimmed in outer margin slightly entering one word on color wheel, few small stains along top edge of last plate, worming and small dampstain in blank lower inner corner of last few leaves, contents otherwise clean; 1/4 morocco folding case. London: Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, 1704
first edition, first issue, omitting Newton's name on the title and including the mathematical appendixes in Latin. "The work summarized Newton's discoveries and theories concerning light and color: the spectrum of the sunlight, the degrees of refraction associated with different colors, the color circle (the first in the history of color theory), the invention of the reflecting telescope, the first workable theory of the rainbow, and experiments on what would later be called 'interference effects' in conjunction with Newton's rings . . . The first edition of the Opticks ends with two mathematical treatises in Latin, written to establish his priority over Leibnitz in the invention of the calculus"--Norman 1588. Babson 132; Becker 273; PMM 172; Wallis 174.
