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Treatise on light Christiaan Huygens Public domain text from Project Gutenberg. Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 14725-h.htm or 14725-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/2/14725/14725-h/14725-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/2/14725/14725-h.zip) TREATISE ON LIGHT In which are explained The causes of that which occurs In REFLEXION, & in REFRACTION And particularly In the strange REFRACTION OF ICELAND CRYSTAL by CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS Rendered into English by SILVANUS P. THOMPSON University of Chicago Press 1 PREFACE I wrote this Treatise during my sojourn in France twelve years ago, and I communicated it in the year 1678 to the learned persons who then composed the Royal Academy of Science, to the membership of which the King had done me the honour of calling, me. Several of that body who are still alive will remember having been present when I read it, and above the rest those amongst them who applied themselves particularly to the study of Mathematics; of whom I cannot cite more than the celebrated gentlemen Cassini, Romer, and De la Hire. And, although I have since corrected and changed some parts, the copies which I had made of it at that time may serve for proof that I have yet added nothing to it save some conjectures touching the formation of Iceland Crystal, and a novel observation on the refraction of Rock Crystal. I have desired to relate these particulars to make known how long I have meditated the things which now I publish, and not for the purpose of detracting from the merit of those who, without having seen anything that I have written, may be found to have treated of like matters: as has in fact occurred to two eminent Geometricia…

Treatise on light

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Treatise on light