A Recipe "to Make Excellent Ink", By Sir Isaac Newton

October 20, 2013

Yes, it's really fun getting such a tangible connection with history. I'm writing my friends letters with this ink right now. I hope you'll post your results, too.

Those are pokeberries on your Flickr page? I think they're growing in my yard.

October 21, 2013

Those are pokeberries on your Flickr page? I think they're growing in my yard.

Yes. Here's the thread for the pokeberry ink I made (lots of photos of the plant). If you live in the south, you've probably got 'em.

May 31, 2014

Here's an updated iron gall ink comparison chart. It gives you a better idea of what the Newton ink looks like next to the others:

August 26, 2014

We homeschool, and what better chemistry and art lesson could there be than having my kids make their own batches of Newton ink! Some of Newton's symbols from his notebooks are not easily interpreted. When I first made this, I couldn't believe how much gum arabic was in his recipe. It was so thick, like paint! And while he does mention adding additional beer as it's used, making me think that he liked to start with a concentrated "ink base," I couldn't help but wonder if we'd misinterpreted the łb symbol. We scoured the web, including the Newton website that had posted his lab notebooks (it has a good section on his symbols, but they left the interpretation for this particular one blank). So... after making many different iron gall ink recipes over the years and learning what seems to be the most balanced ratios to make a well-flowing and permanent ink, I decided to make this latest batch with the łb symbol representing the troy pound (specifically the avoirdupois ounce)... this is shown in red on the chart below. It was a definite improvement and it was a move in the right direction, but it still didn't flow well until I added distilled water to the brew. For a comparison, we made a second batch as well, bringing the gum arabic in closer ratio to how another chemist of yesteryear, Dr. Stark, used for his inks (the Stark figures are shown in black under the gum arabic column below).

Here are the writing samples for the two batches of ink we made. The Stark batch flowed perfectly right out of the bottle. And once again, the Newton batch needed tweaking to get it to flow decently. I added a little distilled water until it was just right. Both made ink, of course. One just flowed better than the other right out of the starting gate. Only the gum arabic was different between batches.. all other chemicals remained at the same ratios.

So the experiment continues... has anyone else made this ink? The łb symbol is still possibly up for interpretation, I suppose!

Edited August 27, 2014 by fiberdrunk