Newton's Color Disc
date: label: date made
content: late nineteenth century
notes: label: Description
content: This mechanical lantern slide has a wooden frame, and a glass disc divided into fourteen (or twice seven) segments, each representing a color of the rainbow; when the disc is rotated rapidly, it appears white.
label: Description
content: In the optical experiments that he described to the Royal Society in 1672, Isaac Newton showed that a prism would disperse sunlight into a spectrum, and identified what he deemed the seven basic colors of this spectrum. In his <i>Opticks</i> (London, 1717), Newton discussed the persistence of vision, noting that a burning coal moved quickly in a circle appears as a continuous circle. Newton’s Color Disc combines these two ideas.
label: Description
content: Ref: Lorenzo Marcy, <i>The Sciopticon Manual</i> (Philadelphia, 1877), p. 31.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Science & Scientific Instruments
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.330313
label: catalog number
content: 330313
label: accession number
content: 287887
objectType: label: Object Name
content: lantern slide
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 3/4 in x 4 in x 10 in; 1.905 cm x 10.16 cm x 25.4 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 7/8 in x 3 15/16 in x 10 in; 4.7625 cm x 10.00125 cm x 25.4 cm