Spectroscopy as a field of experimental and theoretical research has contributed much to our knowledge concerning the physical nature of things - knowledge not only of our own earth but of the sun, of interstellar space, and of the distant stars. It may rightly be said that spectroscopy had its beginning in the year 1966 with the discovery by Sir Isaac Newton that different colored rays of light when allowed to pass through a prism were refracted at different angles. The experiments that Newton actually carried out are well known to everyone. Sunlight confined to a small pencil of rays by means of a hole in a diaphragm and then allowed to pass through a prism was spread out into a beautiful band of color. Although it was known to the ancients that clear crystals when placed in direct sunlight gave rise to spectral arrays, it remained for Newton to show that the colors did not originate in the crystal but were the necessary ingredients that go to make up sunlight. With a lens in the optical path the band of colors falling on a screen became a series of colored images of the hole in the diaphragm. This band Newton called a spectrum.