From: lsmith@deci.cs.umn.edu (Lance "Squiddie" Smith)
Subject: Dream and the Prodigal do history...
Summary: Oh, little Gaiman! You know not what you have wrought!
Organization: The Newtonian Squids of the Poor
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 19:43:21 GMT


Pretty grim week for comics. (You know you're in trouble when the highlight
of your week is Ren and Stimpy.) Anyway, I had a chance to do some more 
reading into Newtonian history. 

Dull stuff. There are probably some swell articles on Spawn elsewhere...


Just remember, when your folx bother you about reading comics, just recite
this stuff. See! Comics are educational.

First, "A Treatise on Optics" just refers to _Opticks_. This was published
in 1704. A Latin translation was published in 1706. (Latin was the lingua
franca of the scientific community.) Samuel Clarke did the translation at
Newton's request.

With the new edition came an additional 7 queries. (Queries were Newton's
observations and often served as areas for further research. All ended with
a question mark.) In the 1706 edition these were queries 17-23. They were 
eventually bumped to spots 25-31 of the second English edition published
in 1717. There was also a third English edition published in 1721.

The query we're probably most interested in is number 30. The query begins,
"Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another, and may
not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light 
which enter their composition?" This is something like what we hear on
page 22 of issue #44. The query continues on about ways in which bodies
may change into light and light may change into bodies. I'm not sure that
this query and the thoughts behind it are as significant as the Prodigal
seems to think.

As mentioned in an earlier post, material for _Opticks_ dates back to 1675 
with additional material added in 1687. The third book, that includes the 
queries, was only 5 pages long and was "put together out of scatter'd
Papers." There is also some connection between Newton's queries and his
lectures on optics as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. However, I 
couldn't find any connection in an annotated copy of his lecture notes.

So I'm afraid this doesn't do much to place the period of the events at
the end of issue #44. Despair's remembrance in #41 would put the abdication
at about 1695. (My impression was that it was about 30 years from 1665
and not precisely that long.) The dissection of the "oran oatan" is 
unlikely to be before 1698. Query 30 comes after 1704, though this may
only be the first time Newton put it into print.

Further, Newton is referred to as "young." (Young by Endless standards,
standards of the time or our standards?) Newton was born in 1642. He
started experimenting with light in 1662. When he first decomposed light
is hard to say. We could place it between 1662 and 1672 when he published
his first paper on it. That would give us a range of 20-30 years old. 
Certainly youngish.

(BTW, there's one theory that states that ROYGBIV came from Newton trying
 to match colors to available paint pigments. Thus we're stuck with indigo.)

Anyone have any other clews?

OBInterestingFact: Newton's opening statement in _Opticks_ is dated April 1st. 

(Getting all this Elmo? I'll never be able to remember it when we get
around to annotating #44.)
--
   Lance "RainDog" Smith     |   "Outrageous, alarming, courageous, charming.
    (lsmith@cs.umn.edu)      |    Oh, who would think a boy and bear 
   Still waiting for the     |    could be well accepted everywhere
    Great Leap Forward.      |    It's just amazing how fair people can be."
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