Great Astronomers - Robert Stawell Ball (the little red hen ebook .TXT) 📗

moving to her new home, about a mile from

Woolsthorpe, she entrusted little Isaac to her mother, Mrs.

Ayscough. In due time we find that the boy was sent to the public

school at Grantham, the name of the master being Stokes. For the

purpose of being near his work, the embryo philosopher was boarded

at the house of Mr. Clark, an apothecary at Grantham. We learn

from Newton himself that at first he had a very low place in the

class lists of the school, and was by no means one of those model

schoolboys who find favour in the eyes of the school-master by

attention to Latin grammar. Isaac’s first incentive to diligent

study seems to have been derived from the circumstance that he was

severely kicked by one of the boys who was above him in the class.

This indignity had the effect of stimulating young Newton’s

activity to such an extent that he not only attained the desired

object of passing over the head of the boy who had maltreated him,

but continued to rise until he became the head of the school.

 

The play-hours of the great philosopher were devoted to pursuits

very different from those of most schoolboys. His chief

amusement was found in making mechanical toys and various

ingenious contrivances. He watched day by day with great interest

the workmen engaged in constructing a windmill in the

neighbourhood of the school, the result of which was that the boy

made a working model of the windmill and of its machinery, which

seems to have been much admired, as indicating his aptitude for

mechanics. We are told that Isaac also indulged in somewhat

higher flights of mechanical enterprise. He constructed a

carriage, the wheels of which were to be driven by the hands of

the occupant, while the first philosophical instrument he made

was a clock, which was actuated by water. He also devoted much

attention to the construction of paper kites, and his skill in

this respect was highly appreciated by his schoolfellows. Like a

true philosopher, even at this stage he experimented on the best

methods of attaching the string, and on the proportions which the

tail ought to have. He also made lanthorns of paper to provide

himself with light as he walked to school in the dark winter

mornings.

 

The only love affair in Newton’s life appears to have commenced

while he was still of tender years. The incidents are thus

described in Brewster’s “Life of Newton,” a work to which I am

much indebted in this chapter.

 

“In the house where he lodged there were some female inmates, in

whose company he appears to have taken much pleasure. One of these,

a Miss Storey, sister to Dr. Storey, a physician at Buckminster,

near Colsterworth, was two or three years younger than Newton and

to great personal attractions she seems to have added more than

the usual allotment of female talent. The society of this young

lady and her companions was always preferred to that of his own

schoolfellows, and it was one of his most agreeable occupations

to construct for them little tables and cupboards, and other

utensils for holding their dolls and their trinkets. He had lived

nearly six years in the same house with Miss Storey, and there is

reason to believe that their youthful friendship gradually rose to

a higher passion; but the smallness of her portion, and the

inadequacy of his own fortune, appear to have prevented the

consummation of their happiness. Miss Storey was afterwards twice

married, and under the name of Mrs. Vincent, Dr. Stukeley visited

her at Grantham in 1727, at the age of eighty-two, and obtained

from her many particulars respecting the early history of

our author. Newton’s esteem for her continued unabated during

his life. He regularly visited her when he went to Lincolnshire,

and never failed to relieve her from little pecuniary difficulties

which seem to have beset her family.”

 

The schoolboy at Grantham was only fourteen years of age when his

mother became a widow for the second time. She then returned to

the old family home at Woolsthorpe, bringing with her the three

children of her second marriage. Her means appear to have been

somewhat scanty, and it was consequently thought necessary to

recall Isaac from the school. His recently-born industry had been

such that he had already made good progress in his studies, and

his mother hoped that he would now lay aside his books, and those

silent meditations to which, even at this early age, he had become

addicted. It was expected that, instead of such pursuits, which

were deemed quite useless, the boy would enter busily into the

duties of the farm and the details of a country life. But before

long it became manifest that the study of nature and the pursuit

of knowledge had such a fascination for the youth that he could

give little attention to aught else. It was plain that he would

make but an indifferent farmer. He greatly preferred

experimenting on his water-wheels to looking after labourers,

while he found that working at mathematics behind a hedge was much

more interesting than chaffering about the price of bullocks in

the market place. Fortunately for humanity his mother, like a

wise woman, determined to let her boy’s genius have the scope

which it required. He was accordingly sent back to Grantham

school, with the object of being trained in the knowledge which

would fit him for entering the University of Cambridge.

 

[PLATE: TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

Showing Newton’s rooms; on the leads of the gateway he placed

his telescope.]

 

It was the 5th of June, 1660, when Isaac Newton, a youth of

eighteen, was enrolled as an undergraduate of Trinity College,

Cambridge. Little did those who sent him there dream that this

boy was destined to be the most illustrious student who ever

entered the portals of that great seat of learning. Little could

the youth himself have foreseen that the rooms near the gateway

which he occupied would acquire a celebrity from the fact that he

dwelt in them, or that the ante-chapel of his college was in good

time to be adorned by that noble statue, which is regarded as one

of the chief art treasures of Cambridge University, both on

account of its intrinsic beauty and the fact that it commemorates

the fame of her most distinguished alumnus, Isaac Newton, the

immortal astronomer. Indeed, his advent at the University seemed

to have been by no means auspicious or brilliant. His birth was,

as we have seen, comparatively obscure, and though he had already

given indication of his capacity for reflecting on philosophical

matters, yet he seems to have been but ill-equipped with the

routine knowledge which youths are generally expected to take with

them to the Universities.

 

From the outset of his college career, Newton’s attention seems to

have been mainly directed to mathematics. Here he began to give

evidence of that marvellous insight into the deep secrets of

nature which more than a century later led so dispassionate a

judge as Laplace to pronounce Newton’s immortal work as

pre-eminent above all the productions of the human intellect.

But though Newton was one of the very greatest mathematicians

that ever lived, he was never a mathematician for the mere sake

of mathematics. He employed his mathematics as an instrument for

discovering the laws of nature. His industry and genius soon

brought him under the notice of the University authorities.

It is stated in the University records that he obtained a

Scholarship in 1664. Two years later we find that Newton, as well

as many residents in the University, had to leave Cambridge

temporarily on account of the breaking out of the plague.

The philosopher retired for a season to his old home at

Woolsthorpe, and there he remained until he was appointed a Fellow

of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1667. From this time onwards,

Newton’s reputation as a mathematician and as a natural philosopher

steadily advanced, so that in 1669, while still but twenty-seven

years of age, he was appointed to the distinguished position of

Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Here he found the

opportunity to continue and develop that marvellous career of

discovery which formed his life’s work.

 

The earliest of Newton’s great achievements in natural philosophy

was his detection of the composite character of light. That a

beam of ordinary sunlight is, in fact, a mixture of a very great

number of different-coloured lights, is a doctrine now familiar

to every one who has the slightest education in physical science.

We must, however, remember that this discovery was really a

tremendous advance in knowledge at the time when Newton announced

it.

 

[PLATE: DIAGRAM OF A SUNBEAM.]

 

We here give the little diagram originally drawn by Newton, to

explain the experiment by which he first learned the composition

of light. A sunbeam is admitted into a darkened room through an

opening, H, in a shutter. This beam when not interfered with will

travel in a straight line to the screen, and there reproduce a

bright spot of the same shape as the hole in the shutter.

If, however, a prism of glass, A B C, be introduced so that the

beam traverse it, then it will be seen at once that the light is

deflected from its original track. There is, however, a further

and most important change which takes place. The spot of light is

not alone removed to another part of the screen, but it becomes

spread out into a long band beautifully coloured, and exhibiting

the hues of the rainbow. At the top are the violet rays, and then

in descending order we have the indigo, blue, green, yellow,

orange, and red.

 

The circumstance in this phenomenon which appears to have

particularly arrested Newton’s attention, was the elongation

which the luminous spot underwent in consequence of its passage

through the prism. When the prism was absent the spot was nearly

circular, but when the prism was introduced the spot was about

five times as long as it was broad. To ascertain the explanation

of this was the first problem to be solved. It seemed natural to

suppose that it might be due to the thickness of the glass in the

prism which the light traversed, or to the angle of incidence at

which the light fell upon the prism. He found, however, upon

careful trial, that the phenomenon could not be thus accounted

for. It was not until after much patient labour that the true

explanation dawned upon him. He discovered that though the beam

of white light looks so pure and so simple, yet in reality it is

composed of differently coloured lights blended together. These

are, of course, indistinguishable in the compound beam, but they

are separated or disentangled, so to speak, by the action of the

prism. The rays at the blue end of the spectrum are more

powerfully deflected by the action of the glass than are the rays

at the red end. Thus, the rays variously coloured red, orange,

yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, are each conducted to a

different part of the screen. In this way the prism has the

effect of exhibiting the constitution of the composite beam of

light.

 

To us this now seems quite obvious, but Newton did not adopt it

hastily. With characteristic caution he verified the explanation

by many different experiments, all of which confirmed his

discovery. One of these may be mentioned. He made a hole in the

screen at that part on which the violet rays fell. Thus a violet

ray was allowed to pass through, all the rest of the light being

intercepted, and on this beam so isolated he was able to try

further experiments. For instance, when he interposed another

prism in its path, he found, as he expected, that it was again

deflected,