Isaac Newton apple story goes online
Published 10:01 am Monday, January 18, 2010
LONDON — An 18th-century account of how a falling apple helped Isaac Newton develop the theory of gravity is being posted to the Web, making the manuscript widely available to the public for the first time.
Britain’s Royal Society said it was making the documents available online today at www. royalsociety.org/ turning-the-pages.
The incident occurred in the mid-1660s, when Newton retreated to his family home in northern England after an outbreak of the plague closed the University of Cambridge, where he had been studying.
The Royal Society’s manuscript, written by Newton’s contemporary William Stukeley, recounts a spring afternoon in 1726 when the famous scientist shared the story over tea “under the shade of some apple trees.”
“He told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind,” Stukeley wrote.
“It was occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself … Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? But constantly to the earth’s center? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter.”
