Account of Newton's apple epiphany online

LONDON: An 18th-century account of how a falling piece of fruit helped Isaac Newton develop the theory of gravity is being posted to the Web, making scans of the fragile paper manuscript widely available to the public for the first time.

Newton's encounter with an apple ranks among science's most celebrated anecdotes, and Britain's Royal Society made the documents available online yesterday.

Royal Society librarian Keith Moore said the apple story has managed to keep its polish in part because it packs in so much - an illustration of how modern science works, an implicit reference to the solar system and even an allusion to the Bible.