ABSTRACT
Light and color have always fascinated mankind. The action of a prism was known to the Romans: Seneca, Nero’s tutor, noted that the colors formed by a prism were like those of the rainbow, possibly the first recorded comparison of one spectrum with another. The study of light advanced immensely under Newton, who proved that color was inseparable from light itself and, in a communication published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1671, gave the name spectrum to the bands of color into which light separates on refraction.
