Physicist and inventor — Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875) was an English physicist and inventor, professor at King’s College London. Trained as a maker of musical instruments, he later turned to acoustics, optics and electricity. He is celebrated above all for popularising and putting to practical use the “Wheatstone bridge”, a circuit for the precise measurement of electrical resistances (actually devised by Samuel Hunter Christie). With William Cooke he developed and patented one of the first commercial electric telegraphs, giving a decisive boost to telecommunications. He was also the inventor of the stereoscope, which showed how the brain merges two slightly different images to perceive depth, and he carried out pioneering measurements of the speed of propagation of electric current.
Fun fact
The famous “Wheatstone bridge” was actually invented by Samuel Hunter Christie: Wheatstone honestly always credited Christie with the invention, but it was his own name that stuck.
Theories and contributions
- Wheatstone bridge — Bridge circuit for measuring resistances; at balance (zero-reading detector) .
- Stereoscopy — Demonstrates that three-dimensional vision arises from the fusion of two slightly different retinal images (binocular disparity).
- Electric telegraph — Develops with Cooke one of the first commercial telegraph systems, a foundation of electrical telecommunications.
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