Newton’s studies into optics had been due to his desire to improve the performance of telescopes

Newton’s studies into optics had been due to his desire to improve the performance of telescopes, and these findings made him believe that greater precision could not be achieved in optical instruments based on the refractive principle. He resorted, consequently, to proposals for a reflecting telescope by earlier scientists but never put it into practice. He constructed several reflecting telescope models in which the image was beamed in a concave mirror through. He delivered one of these to the Royal Society and they were amazed. This encouraged him to publish his findings in On Color, which he later broadened into his book, Opticks, but these received widespread criticism from then scientists, among them, Robert Hooke, for his observations went against the widely-held wave theory of light.