Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS FRSE, was an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope, and the Playfair cipher.
50 Facts About Charles Wheatstone
2.
However, Wheatstone is best known for his contributions in the development of the Wheatstone bridge, originally invented by Samuel Hunter Christie, which is used to measure an unknown electrical resistance, and as a major figure in the development of telegraphy.
3.
Charles Wheatstone's father, W Wheatstone, was a music-seller in the town, who moved to 128 Pall Mall, London, four years later, becoming a teacher of the flute.
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Charles Wheatstone's father encouraged him in this, and finally took him out of the uncle's charge.
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At the age of fifteen, Charles Wheatstone translated French poetry, and wrote two songs, one of which was given to his uncle, who published it without knowing it as his nephew's composition.
6.
Charles Wheatstone often visited an old book-stall in the vicinity of Pall Mall, which was then a dilapidated and unpaved thoroughfare.
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At Christchurch, Marylebone, on 12 February 1847, Charles Wheatstone was married to Emma West.
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Charles Wheatstone was the daughter of a Taunton tradesman, and of handsome appearance.
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Charles Wheatstone died in 1866, leaving a family of five young children to his care.
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Charles Wheatstone was knighted in 1868, after his completion of the automatic telegraph.
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Charles Wheatstone had previously been made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
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Charles Wheatstone's remains were taken to his home in Park Crescent, London, and buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
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In September 1821, Charles Wheatstone brought himself into public notice by exhibiting the 'Enchanted Lyre,' or 'Acoucryptophone,' at a music shop at Pall Mall and in the Adelaide Gallery.
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At this period Charles Wheatstone made numerous experiments on sound and its transmission.
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Charles Wheatstone recognised that sound is propagated by waves or oscillations of the atmosphere, as light was then believed to be by undulations of the luminiferous ether.
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Charles Wheatstone estimated that sound would travel 200 miles per second through solid rods, and proposed to telegraph from London to Edinburgh in this way.
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Besides transmitting sounds to a distance, Charles Wheatstone devised a simple instrument for augmenting feeble sounds, to which he gave the name of 'Microphone.
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Charles Wheatstone had no great liking for the commercial part, but his ingenuity found a vent in making improvements on the existing instruments, and in devising philosophical toys.
19.
In 1828, Charles Wheatstone improved the German wind instrument, called the Mundharmonika, until it became the popular concertina, patented on 19 December 1829.
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Charles Wheatstone improved the speaking machine of De Kempelen, and endorsed the opinion of Sir David Brewster, that before the end of this century a singing and talking apparatus would be among the conquests of science.
21.
In 1834, Charles Wheatstone, who had won a name for himself, was appointed to the Chair of Experimental Physics in King's College London.
22.
Charles Wheatstone cut the wire at the middle, to form a gap which a spark might leap across, and connected its ends to the poles of a Leyden jar filled with electricity.
23.
Charles Wheatstone mounted a tiny mirror on the works of a watch, so that it revolved at a high velocity, and observed the reflections of his three sparks in it.
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Charles Wheatstone witnessed these experiments as a youth, which were apparently a stimulus for his own research in telegraphy.
25.
Charles Wheatstone abandoned his idea of transmitting intelligence by the mechanical vibration of rods, and took up the electric telegraph.
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Charles Wheatstone made experiments with a plan of his own, and not only proposed to lay an experimental line across the Thames, but to establish it on the London and Birmingham Railway.
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Charles Wheatstone returned to London soon after, and was able to exhibit a telegraph with three needles in January 1837.
28.
Charles Wheatstone, according to his own statement, remarked to Cooke that the method would not act, and produced his own experimental telegraph.
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Finally, Cooke proposed that they should enter into a partnership, but Charles Wheatstone was at first reluctant to comply.
30.
Charles Wheatstone was a well-known man of science, and had meant to publish his results without seeking to make capital of them.
31.
Cooke was in charge at Camden Town, while Robert Stephenson and other gentlemen looked on; and Charles Wheatstone sat at his instrument in a dingy little room, lit by a tallow candle, near the booking-office at Euston.
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Charles Wheatstone had even designed the machinery for making and laying the cable.
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In 1840 Charles Wheatstone had patented an alphabetical telegraph, or, 'Charles Wheatstone A B C instrument,' which moved with a step-by-step motion, and showed the letters of the message upon a dial.
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In 1859 Charles Wheatstone was appointed by the Board of Trade to report on the subject of the Atlantic cables, and in 1864 he was one of the experts who advised the Atlantic Telegraph Company on the construction of the successful lines of 1865 and 1866.
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Charles Wheatstone further invented the automatic transmitter, in which the signals of the message are first punched out on a strip of paper, which is then passed through the sending-key, and controls the signal currents.
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The plan of sending messages by a running strip of paper which actuates the key was originally patented by Alexander Bain in 1846; but Charles Wheatstone, aided by Augustus Stroh, an accomplished mechanician, and an able experimenter, was the first to bring the idea into successful operation.
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Charles Wheatstone showed that our impression of solidity is gained by the combination in the mind of two separate pictures of an object taken by both of our eyes from different points of view.
38.
In 1840, Charles Wheatstone introduced his chronoscope, for measuring minute intervals of time, which was used in determining the speed of a bullet or the passage of a star.
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In 1843 Charles Wheatstone communicated an important paper to the Royal Society, entitled 'An Account of Several New Processes for Determining the Constants of a Voltaic Circuit.
40.
The method was neglected until Charles Wheatstone brought it into notice.
41.
Charles Wheatstone introduced a unit of resistance, namely, a foot of copper wire weighing one hundred grains, and showed how it might be applied to measure the length of wire by its resistance.
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Charles Wheatstone was awarded a medal for his paper by the Society.
43.
Charles Wheatstone was responsible for the then unusual Playfair cipher, named after his friend Lord Playfair.
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Charles Wheatstone became involved in the interpretation of cipher manuscripts in the British Museum.
45.
Charles Wheatstone devised a cryptograph or machine for turning a message into cipher which could only be interpreted by putting the cipher into a corresponding machine adjusted to decrypt it.
46.
In 1840, Charles Wheatstone brought out his magneto-electric machine for generating continuous currents.
47.
Varley patented it on 24 December 1866; Siemens called attention to it on 17 January 1867; and Charles Wheatstone exhibited it in action at the Royal Society on the above date.
48.
Charles Wheatstone was involved in various disputes with other scientists throughout his life regarding his role in different technologies and appeared at times to take more credit than he was due.
49.
Charles Wheatstone was erroneously believed by many to have created the atmospheric electricity observing apparatus that Ronalds invented and developed at the observatory in the 1840s and to have installed the first automatic recording meteorological instruments there.
50.
Charles Wheatstone married Emma West, spinster, a daughter of John Hooke West, deceased, at Christ Church, Marylebone, on 12 February 1847.