Watch: Danielle Hall investigates the latest sketch believed to be drawn by Isaac Newton
Graffiti thought to be scratched by a young Sir Isaac Newton has been discovered by a Nottingham Trent University PhD candidate.
Sir Newton was the scientist behind developing the theory of gravity and was a keen sketcher.
Over the last 80 years, nine scratches believed to have been done by him around 350 years ago have been discovered at his childhood home of Woolsthorpe Manor.
Now a 10th, believed to be a windmill, has been identified using light.
Conservator Chris Pickup said: “I had a technique that I knew would work extremely well to record the graffiti but whether it was able to find new graffiti I had to admit was unlikely.
“But I did have another very simple technique I thought we could try and the amazing thing it’s been there in plain sight and no-one has seen it before.
“It’s very faint but it’s definitely there.”
Chris used raking light which casts a bright light on a surface at a very low angle to pick out any shapes or indents.
He said: “What we try and do is take a series of photographs and it’s the same photograph over and over and over again.
“The only difference is the light direction in each one and what’s clever about this technique is when it gets into the software.
“It reads every one of those photographs, puts them on top of each other and it calculates exactly what the colour and tone of each one of those pixels would be at that light direction.
“The net result of that is that you get, on the computer screen, a movable digital light you can rake around the surface.”
Conservation manager at Woolsthorpe Manor Margaret Winn said: “It gives a little insight into Newton as he was.
“We all sort of think of him as this revered old gentleman with all his books around him but here, he was a child.
“One thing that is really exciting is how light has been used because Newton did so much work on light and it’s sort of come around full circle.”
