LONDON — An 18th-century account of how a falling piece of fruit helped Isaac Newton develop the theory of gravity is being posted to the Web, making scans of the fragile manuscript widely available to the public for the first time.
Newton’s encounter with an apple ranks among science’s most celebrated anecdotes, and Britain’s Royal Society said it was making the documents available online today. Royal Society librarian Keith Moore said the apple story has managed to keep its polish in part because it packs in so much — an illustration of how modern science works, an implicit reference to the solar system and even an allusion to the Bible.
The manuscript, written by Newton’s contemporary William Stukeley, recounts a spring afternoon in 1726 when the 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.”
