NEEDLE-EYE NEWTON

DOI: 10.4324/9781003239284-4

The legend is that Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree in 1666, just minding his own business, when a piece of fruit hit him on the head. And BOOM! He discovered the laws of gravity. That’s not quite how it happened.

For certain, the apple never hit him on the head. That part was made up years after Newton died. But nobody is sure the event actually ever happened at all. Newton only started telling the story when he was an old man, long after he had become famous for inventing calculus, building a better telescope, and discovering the laws of motion. He thought it made an amusing story to help explain his theories.

One story Newton did not share with audiences was how he did his research on light and color. He was interested in how the eye worked and how it saw color, so he decided that the best way to do this was to push a needle into his own eye. Then, like any good scientist, he wrote about the results of the experiment.

For certain, the apple never hit him on the head. That part was made up years after Newton died. But nobody is sure the event actually ever happened at all.

This experiment took place when Newton was 23 years old. He had been studying at Cambridge University when plague broke out in London. In just a few months, thousands of people had died. Hie professors at Cambridge were afraid that visitors would bring the plague to the university, so they closed down the school. Newton and the other students went home. Some never returned because they caught the horrible fever in their hometown and died. But Newton went to the solitude of his country home and never got sick. Instead, he spent his time experimenting, including poking a needle in his eye.

Newton wrote in his science journal that he slid the bodkin (a blunt needle) between the eyeball and the bone and pushed it back as far as he could to the backside of his eye. He observed that having the needle in his eye caused him to see “several white and dark-colored circles.”

He continued to experiment to see the difference between having a needle in his eye in a light room and a dark room. In a light room, he said the circles were bluish. He still wasn’t done and also tried the same experiment with a “sharp” bodkin. He found that when he moved the needle or bodkin, spots appeared, but when he stopped moving the needle, the spots disappeared. He also experimented with looking directly at the sun. He used the results of his experiments to write an essay titled “Of Colours.”

Amazingly, Newton did not seriously damage his eyes with his experiments. He went on to experiment with prisms and eventually discovered how to make a telescope using mirrors instead of heavy lenses. He was able to create a more powerful microscope that was 10 times smaller than traditional telescopes. The scientists in the Royal Society were impressed and asked Newton to share the results of his research with them.

But Newton wasn't big on sharing information. He liked to keep discoveries to himself, so he gave a vague description of his experiments. When the scientists questioned him about his methods, Newton got angry and picked a fight with the head of the Royal Society. It started a lifelong battle between scientist Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton that didn’t end until Hooke’s death.

He continued to experiment to see the difference between having a needle in his eye in a light room and a dark room.

Newton was good at making people angry. He fought with Gottfried Leibniz over who actually invented calculus. When Leibniz published his work, Newton threw a fit and said he'd done the work 20 years before. Of course, Newton had never bothered to publish his work so no one knew he’d come up with calculus. It was only when Leibniz was getting the glory that Newton bothered to show his work.

Newton was good at making people angry. He fought with Gottfried Leibniz over who actually invented calculus.

Newton really didn’t want to share credit with Leibniz. In 1713, the Royal Society formed a committee to solve the question of who invented calculus. The committee declared that Newton had beaten Leibniz by two decades. But the author of the Royal Society report was actually Sir Isaac Newton. Their feud also lasted until death. Historians now believe that Newton and Leibniz independently invented the process of calculus, but Newton did indeed discover it 20 years earlier.

NEWTON'S GOLD?

As Isaac Newton grew older, it is said he became a little crazy. He was obsessed with studying the philosopher's stone. Yup—the same stone that is in the Harry Potter books. (Of course, Newton never knew about Harry Potter.) Newton was sure he could find a way to turn lead into gold and create his own philosopher's stone.

When Newton died, hundreds of his papers written on alchemy were found, but friends of Newton hid the papers to protect the great scientist's reputation. The papers were later found and sold at an auction in 1936. Modern-day scientists have studied samples of Newton's hair and found that it contains huge amounts of mercury. Mercury poisoning often leads to insanity. The exposure to mercury was probably the result of years of unprotected experiments.