The Theory of Light

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Macmillan and Company, 1895 - 574 pages
 

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Page 20 - Those that are averse from assenting to any new discoveries but such as they can explain by an hypothesis may for the present suppose that, as stones by falling upon water put the water into an undulating motion and all bodies by percussion excite vibrations in the air, so the rays of light...
Page 21 - Is not vision performed chiefly by the vibrations of this medium., excited in the bottom of the eye by the rays of light, and propagated through the solid, pellucid, and uniform capillamenta of the nerves into the place of sensation?
Page 119 - I stopped the prism and fix'd it in that posture, that it should be moved no more. For in that posture the refractions of the light at the two sides of the refracting angle, that is at the entrance of the rays into the prism, and at their going out of it were equal to one another.
Page 21 - ... and are not these vibrations propagated from the point of incidence to great distances < And do they not overtake the rays of light, and by overtaking them successively, do they not put them into the fits of easy reflexion and easy transmission described above...
Page 20 - Every Ray of Light in its passage through any refracting Surface is put into a certain transient Constitution or State, which in the progress of the Ray returns at equal Intervals, and disposes the Ray at every return to be easily transmitted through the next refracting Surface, and between the returns to be easily reflected by it.
Page 21 - And is not this Medium the same with that Medium by which Light is refracted and reflected, and by whose Vibrations Light communicates Heat to bodies .... And is not this Medium exceedingly more rare and subtile than the Air, and exceedingly more elastick and active?
Page 119 - The axis of the prism (that is, the line passing through the middle of the prism from one end of it to the other end parallel to the edge of the refracting angle) was in this and the following experiments perpendicular to the incident rays.

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