In other words, Newton held that white light is composed of colours that can be considered primary a statement that he proved in what is now known as ‘The Crucial Experiment’, which incorporated the use of prisms to separate the white light and to isolate a given colour, as each colour has a unique angle of refraction. This paper was the first of many to outline Newton’s theory that white light is a “Heterogeneous mixture of differently refrangible rays”, where ‘heterogeneous’ refers to something that is diverse in content, and ‘refrangible’ refers to matter that is able to be refracted. His theories regarding optics, however, were made public right at the start of his career with his first written work on optics being published just after his election to the Royal Society. Most of Newton’s theories only became known later in his life and after the publication of the 'Principia'.
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