During the early 1800s, Joseph von Fraunhofer conducted experiments with dispersive spectrometers that enabled spectroscopy to become a more precise and quantitative scientific technique. Since then, spectroscopy has played and continues to play a significant role in chemistry . Colour dispersion angles exaggerated for visualisation. Modern spectroscopy in the Western world started in the 17th century. New designs in optics, specifically prisms, enabled systematic observations of the solar spectrum. Isaac Newton first applied the word spectrum to describe the rainbow of. Perhaps the first quantitative investigation that can be said to have a direct bearing on the science of spectroscopy would be the discovery of Snel's law of refraction in about 1621. It. Fraunhofer, born near Munich in 1787, extended Newton's discovery by observing that the sun's spectrum, when sufficiently dispersed, was crossed by a large number of fine dark lines (1814), now known as Fraunhofer lines.
