Smith, Robert | A Compleat System of Opticks. Cambridge: for the author, 1738

Smith, Robert

A Compleat System of Opticks. Cambridge: for the author, 1738

First edition of an influential work in establishing the acceptance of the corpuscular theory of light in the eighteenth century.

Smith was the Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, where he founded Smith's prizes. This work, one of the most useful contemporary treatises of its kind, was drawn largely from Newton's work on optics. The edition also contains the author's remarks upon the whole work and James Jurin's "Essay" upon distinct and indistinct vision. 

Large 4to (254 x 195 mm). Errata leaf and advertisement at the end, 83 folding engraved plates, lacking title-page to volume 2; a few stray spots to text, faint and scattered staining to plates, a few marginal repairs, some faint offsetting. Contemporary three-quarter brown calf and paper-covered boards, flat spine with gilt device in false compartments, edges speckled red, marbled endpapers; rubbed and stained, spine panel detached though mostly present, upper board detached.  

REFERENCES

ESTC T100004; Babson 161; Blake 422; British Optical Association 194

PROVENANCE

Robert S. Dunham (acquired from Zeitlin and Van Brugge in April 1956)