[pure-silver] Re: donut solution; enlarger lens problem
- From: Helge Nareid <h.nareid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 23:30:40 +0100
Georges Giralt wrote:
Helge Nareid a écrit :
.................................
So the name "Newton's rings" refers to the spectrum effects found in the
patterns, and not to any contribution of he may have made to explain the
phenomenon.
- Helge Nareid
With all due respect, I was told that he gave a description of the
phenomenum of the Newton rings. Of course, he was wrong at explaining
WHAT caused them but as he was the first to describe the phenomenom and
provide an explanation he get credit for it.
Does anyone in the audience have a degree in history of science and can
correct me if I'm wrong ?
My reply was probably somewhat hasty, and made without checking any
references. Mea culpa - I really should do some checking before posting.
However, the Wikipedia entry for Newton's Rings attributes the first
observation to Robert Hooke - who was one of the first to propose a wave
theory for light. Newton also published a description of the same
phenomenon in his "Opticks". Hooke and Newton were contemporaries and
bitter rivals, so it is difficult to work out who had the right of
discovery. It is probably one of these cases of technology having
reached the state where the discovery was "obvious", and it may well
have been made independently at approximately the same time by both (or
more) people.
So I will admit that I was mistaken in stating that Newton had not
provided a description of Newton's Rings. However. as far as I can work
out, his suggestion for a corpusceral theory of light fails to provide
an adequate explanation of the phenomenon.
This reminds me of one of the classic games in optical science writing
(probably any kind of scientific writing with historical references) -
going back to the earliest reference. In some disciplines, such as
colour theory. the game used to between Goethe (remember the colour
theory) and Newton. Of course, there is always Aristotle. Personally, I
take some moderate pride in bringing the history of Lippmann colour
photography back to Thomas Seebeck in 1810 (as an appendix to Goethe's
"Farbenlehre"). This takes the history of colour photography back to
before the invention of photography.
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