Newton's apple encounter falls online

New Delhi: Sir Isaac Newton's encounter with an apple is said to be science's most celebrated anecdote. Now, a fragile manuscript that tells the original story of how the fruit inspired him, has dropped on the net.

The handwritten account of Newton's "eureka" moment, which led to his famous "theory of gravity", was recorded for posterity by the great scientist's close friend and colleague William Stukeley in a 1752 biography.

Until now the manuscript has remained hidden away in the Royal Society's archives - but it has now been posted on the Internet by the Britain's leading academic institution to mark its 350th anniversary.

Stukeley, an early antiquarian famous for his studies of Stonehenge, heard how Newton's thoughts turned to gravity as the two men sat in the shade of some apple trees in the scientist's garden in the 1720s.
The extract, from Stukeley's 'Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life', reads: "After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank thea (sic), 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. 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..."

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Stukeley also gathered material about Newton's younger days from residents of Lincolnshire, where he went to school. One story tells of the young Newton building a working scale model of a windmill. But, unimpressed by wind power he constructed a fully functional mouse-driven mill "which worked it as naturally as the wind".

Keith Moore, head archivist at Royal Society was quoted by the British media as saying: "This is the account that put the famous anecdote on the map."

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