Newton (Sir Isaac) Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light, 3 parts in 1, first edition, presentation copy to Nicolas Fatio de Duillier and with his ink and pencil annotations, title printed in red and black, 19 folding engraved plates, paper flaw to part 1 p.98 with some distortion to 2 lines of text and letters supplied in ink by the printer, a couple of other printing flaws probably features of the earliest copies to come off the press, contemporary panelled calf, rubbed, joints split but firm, spine ends slightly chipped, corners worn, lacking spine label, preserved in modern silk-lined green morocco drop-back box by Shepherds, [Babson p.66; Gray 174; Wallis 174], 4to, Printed for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, 1704.⁂ Highly important association copy, received by Fatio, Newton's close friend and collaborator, five days before Newton himself presented a copy to the Royal Society. The earliest known presentation copy of the only book Newton prepared for publication and saw through the press himself.Inscribed at the top of the front pastedown in Fatio's hand: 'Ex Dono Autoris Clarissimi: Londini, Februarii undecimo, 1703/4. Nicolaus Facius.' Fatio also used the Latin form of his name in an inscription recording presentation by Newton in his copy of the third edition of the Principia (1726).The date of presentation is of particular interest. The Opticks builds on work that Newton carried out as early as the mid-1660s and later presented in his earliest lectures as Lucasian Professor in Cambridge. His first publications in the journal of the Royal Society, the Philosophical Transactions, were on the nature of light. For much of the 1670s, he engaged in critical correspondence with English and Continental virtuosi about his findings. As he stated in the 'Advertisement' at the beginning of the published Opticks, he began to prepare a more complete work on light in about 1675. He returned to the idea of publishing this work only after the appearance of the Principia (which contained one section on optical mechanics) in 1687 had won him international fame. The manuscript was largely prepared in the period 1687-8 and 1691-2. The Scottish mathematician and Oxford Professor of Astronomy, David Gregory, saw an incomplete text when he visited Newton in Cambridge in May 1694. Newton delayed finishing the book, however, and decided to print it only in 1702 or 1703. The book was going through the press in December 1703. On 16 February 1704, Newton presented the completed book to the Royal Society, of which he had been President since 30 November 1703. The copy on offer was presented to Fatio five days earlier.Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (1664-1753) was a Swiss mathematician and natural philosopher. Educated at the Academy of Geneva, Fatio worked with Giovanni Domenico Cassini at the Royal Observatory in Paris in the early 1680s. He first came to England in 1687 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society on 2 May 1688. After the Revolution of 1688, Fatio was the most important intermediary between Newton and Huygens. Fatio regarded himself (with some justification) as being among the very few mathematicians internationally who were equipped to handle the new calculus and as being in the forefront of scientists who were trying to explain the action of gravity, the force which played such an important role in the physical explanations provided by the Principia. In the early 1690s, Fatio emerged as the likeliest person to produce a revised edition of the Principia and discussed corrections to the work with Newton, to whose manuscripts he also had access. At this time, he was one of Newton's closest confidants. The two men regularly exchanged letters (several of which remain unpublished) and Fatio advised Newton in particular about the purchase of alchemical works in French. For much of 1693, Newton and Fatio collaborated on alchemical experiments, with Fatio conveying information derived from practitioners with whom he associated in the London Huguenot community. According to William R. Newman, who has recently produced a definitive account of the alchemical collaboration of Newton and Fatio, Newton was 'testing the ability of a vitriol to "ferment" respectively with salts of lead, tin, and copper' and fermenting iron, copper, and lead with metallic quicksilver. Exhaustion from long hours tending the furnace involved in these experiments may well have caused Newton's famous breakdown, which he discussed in letters to Samuel Pepys and John Locke in autumn 1693. Newman's work demonstrates that Fatio's involvement with Newton reflected shared intellectual concerns with 'chymistry, the transformation of materials, and the production of remedies.' These interests remained vital despite Newton's illness, which cannot now be attributed to any falling out with Fatio. Fatio found new employment as a tutor in 1694, which required him to be away from London; he travelled to the Netherlands with his pupil in 1697-8, and returned to Geneva between 1699 and 1701. Nevertheless, he remained a regular participant in conversations among Newton and his disciples: his interest in the renewed editing of the Principia and in Newton's other projects was taken for granted.In London in 1698, Fatio set to work seeing two compositions of his own through the press: an English treatise on the exploitation of the angle of the sun's rays in gardening (Fruit Walls Improved) and a Latin pamphlet on the geometrical investigation of the line of quickest descent (Lineae brevissimi descensus), a work notable for its author's attempt to reassert a position among the front rank of European mathematicians. As such Fatio was critical of the behaviour of Johann Bernoulli and his associates for the nature of the challenge problem which they had issued in 1696, and which Newton had answered with a correct solution for the line of quickest descent. Newton had presented his work anonymously in the Philosophical Transactions (January 1697), but gave no hint about the method he had followed. He presented a construction of the solution-curve (a cycloid).Behind Bernoulli's challenge lurked Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whom Fatio accused of having ignored Newton's priority in the invention of the calculus in his publications about this mathematical tool. At the heart of the dispute lay a broader intellectual problem that many Continental mathematicians had in accepting Newton's subordination of his method of fluxions to traditional geometrical arguments and their consequent belief that Newton had not properly mastered the intricacies of the new analysis that Leibniz had developed. On such a reading, no other mathematician in England except Newton was worthy of consideration (Fatio included). Fatio's pamphlet also treated the problem of the solid of least resistance, which Newton had solved in Book II of the Principia (1687). He wished to show that, …
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