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Newton first announced himself to the Society by sending a remarkable new telescope "to be examined" by the virtuosi. Based on reflection rather than refraction, his new instrument eliminated chromatic aberration and was a vast improvement on existing designs. Newton also sent a letter to Oldenburg expanding upon his design and requesting a "review, before it should go abroad." The Society acted immediately. The description was read aloud, and entered in the register along with a "scheme" (that is, an image of the telescope). In gratitude, Newton was elected a fellow Oldenburg wrote him a laudatory reply, assuring Newton that "the society would take care, that all right should be done him with respect to this invention." To ensure that this was so, he simultaneously wrote to Huygens in Paris "to secure this contrivance to the author." Meanwhile the Society ordered the instrument maker Christopher Cock to make its own version of the new telescope.17

All this was as it should be, and the reading of the submission duly prompted others to advance their own claims. Over succeeding months contributions came in from all sides. The letters were edited by Oldenburg to make them diplomatic enough, and forwarded to Newton. Meanwhile, at the Society, Robert Hooke did his own duty by pursuing the subject experimentally. He soon proclaimed a discovery of his own that would, he said, allow for the perfection of telescopes. But Hooke refused to reveal it, instead lodging his claim in the form of a cipher. That was a time-honored custom in the mathematical sciences, but one that here may have betrayed a certain skepticism about the integrity of the register system.18 Then a further letter arrived from Newton describing his new theory of light and colors, according to which "light is not a similar, but a heterogeneous body," consisting of "rays" of different refrangibility Now the reading conventions came fully into play. The letter was duly registered, and given to Ward, Boyle, and Hooke to "peruse and consider it, and bring in a report of it." Oldenburg further asked Newton to consent to publication, "as well for the greater convenience of having it well considered by philosophers, as for securing the considerable notions of the authors against the pretensions of others." It duly appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for February. 19

As usual, the perusal inaugurated a response. It was this, however, that now caused problems. At the Society's next meeting Hooke stood up and delivered the results of his perusal. They amounted to a set of "considerations" on Newton's letter. Hooke concurred with Newton's experimental reports, but declined to find them conclusive in confirming his theory of colors. He could justifiably have claimed that there was nothing untoward about his comments, since perusals were precisely supposed to suggest interesting queries for future discussion and experiment. But in fact what Hooke said triggered a serious breach. In effect, he claimed that Newton was demanding that excessive weight be given to his -unique and hitherto uncorroborated-experimental facts and reasonings upon them. This implied that in Hooke's eyes Newton was not adequately adhering to the norms of the experimental philosophy itself. He was thanked for his "ingenious reflections," whichwere registered in their own right and sent on to Newton. He replied courteously, expressing pleasure that Hooke's perusal had confirmed so much of his argument and confidence that its certainty would soon be accepted. But the Society recognized the risk of a clash: Newton's own paper must be published alone, it decided, "lest Mr. Newton should look upon it as a disrespect, in printing so sudden a refutation of a discourse of his, which had met with so much applause at the Society but a few days before."20

Hooke continued to perform his duty as curator of experiments. He created a series of experimental variations derived from his original perusal over the course of several weeks. He brought in his own prisms, advanced his own plans for telescopes, proclaimed