Wheatstone, SIR CHARLES, scientist, electrician, and the pioneer of telegraphy, was born in the vicinity of Gloucester, in February 1802. A precocious child, he could read at four years of age, and at the private school which he afterwards attended he showed a strong liking for mathematics and physics. In 1806 his father, who was a musical instrument maker, removed to London, and began business. In 1816 young Wheatstone was placed with his uncle, a music-seller, but his father removed him when he saw that he was more inclined for study. Endowed with remarkable ingenuity, he produced numerous models and apparatus to illustrate the phenomena of acoustics and light, and also exhibited some clever musical instruments. For a period of six years (1823-29) Wheatstone was back at the music-selling business. A paper of his on New Experiments in Sound was translated into French and German, and previous to 1833 he had published five papers connected with this subject. In 1831 he read a paper on Transmission of Sound through Solids before the Royal Institution, and henceforward he became known as an earnest and hard-working man of science. Although he could describe and explain his inventions clearly enough, he was shy and sensitive, and failed as a lecturer, many of his investigations being made known by Faraday at the Royal Institution.
In 1834 he was appointed professor of Experimental Philosophy at King's College. He invented a rotating mirror, by means of which he determined the time the electric impulse took to travel along a mile of copper wire. His future studies were now in the line of sound and electricity. In 1835 he made a speaking-machine with an india-rubber mouth, which uttered such simple words as 'rum,' 'mamma,' &c. Wheatstone and W. F. Cooke in 1837 took out a patent 'for improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric currents transmitted through metallic circuits.' From this instrument, which had five needles, has grown that system of electric telegraphs which now ramifies over the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. Between 1836-40 his mind was also occupied with the problem of submarine telegraphy (see TELEGRAPH).
In a paper on Binocular Vision laid before the Royal Society in 1838 he explained the principle of the Stereoscope (q.v.), an instrument of his invention; in 1840 he showed that, by means of electro-magnetism, a number of clocks far apart might be kept going with absolute exactitude from one central clock (see Vol. IV. p. 253); and in 1843 he brought out his new instruments and processes for determining the constants of a voltaic series. Wheatstone was unrivalled in reading secret cipher; and his own cryptograph is said to have never been deciphered. There were also his automatic telegraph in two forms; his telegraph thermometer and barometer; a machine for the conversion of dynamical into electrical force without the use of permanent magnets; and an apparatus for conveying instructions to engineers and steersmen on board large steam-vessels. The method of measuring electrical resistance known as Wheatstone's Bridge (brought into notice, though not invented by him) is explained at ELECTRICITY, Vol. IV. p. 268. Nor should we omit to mention his Concertina (q.v.) and polar clock. He was a vice-president of the Royal Society, and received its royal medal in 1840 and 1843, and the Copley medal in 1868. He was knighted in 1868, was made LL.D. of Edinburgh in 1869, and died at Paris, October 19, 1875.
Most of Wheatstone's investigations are described in Philosophical Transactions, Proceedings of the Royal Society, and British Association Reports. His Scientific Papers (1879) are among the publications of the Physical Society, London. See Proc. Inst. C. E. (xlvi.), and Proc. Roy. Soc. (xxiv. 47).