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CuriositiesJune 11, 2026 · 8 min read

A short history of spectroscopy: from Newton's prism to a sensor in your pocket

Two hundred years from splitting light to a device that measures a material's composition in the field. The milestones that led to the method's availability today.

Two hundred years from Newton splitting white light with a prism to a portable device that measures a material’s composition right in the field. This article is a placeholder: fill it in with a timeline of the milestones that led to today’s availability of the VIS-NIR method.

To fill in

  • Newton and the splitting of white light (17th century).
  • The discovery of Fraunhofer lines and the birth of quantitative spectroscopy.
  • The first laboratory spectrophotometers (20th century).
  • Detector miniaturization and the path to portable devices.

Content in progress.

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