‘In a parental position to our telegraph system’: Charles Wheatstone

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Bowers
Keyword(s):  
Charles Wheatstone

I. On a new form of dynamo-magneto-electric machine

1875 ◽  
Vol 23 (156-163) ◽  
pp. 496-498
Keyword(s):  
Great Part ◽  
Electric Machine ◽  
Platinum Wire ◽  
External Work ◽  
New Form ◽  
Charles Wheatstone

In the first machines constructed by Siemens and Wheatstone in 1867 (see Royal Society’s Transactions) the power of augmenting the magnetism by successive currents, developed from the original residua magnetism contained in the iron, was fully demonstrated, and it was shown that the power of the machine could thereby be developed to great extent; but the only means for obtaining external work was by the insertion in the circuit of a magnet or coil so that the secondary discharge could be utilized. Sir Charles Wheatstone also showed that a great part of the current could be shunted through a platinum wire, care being taken that the resistance of the platinum wire was sufficient to compel a large part of the current to pass round the electromagnet.

Hearing the Field

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pesic
Keyword(s):  
Electromagnetic Induction ◽  
Mathematical Education ◽  
Web Browsers ◽  
Scientific Education ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
Royal Institution ◽  
Charles Wheatstone ◽  
Michael Faraday

The entwined stories of Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday interwove sound and electromagnetism, as had Hans Christian Ørsted’s original discoveries in that field. Though Faraday lacked mathematical education, his feeling for music complemented his visual and experimental turn of mind. Wheatstone also lacked scientific education but came from a family of instrument builders and invented a number of musical devices, including the concertina. Wheatstone extended Ernst Chladni’s work to investigate dynamic, transient vibrations of bodies, especially the transmission of sound along rods. In his lectures at the Royal Institution, Faraday demonstrated Wheatstone’s ongoing work, including some experiments involving Javanese instruments and guimbardes (“Jew’s harp”). This chapter discusses how their unusual collaboration led Wheatstone to discover telegraphy and Faraday to the intensive investigations of sound immediately preceding and preparing his discovery of electromagnetic induction, as indicated by his notebooks and letters. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Sir Charles Wheatstone, FRS, 1802-1875 (review)

2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 820-822
Author(s):  
Bernard S. Finn
Keyword(s):  
Charles Wheatstone

Dust Plate, Retina, Photograph: Imaging on Experimental Surfaces in Early Nineteenth-Century Physics

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chitra Ramalingam
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Photographic Plate ◽  
Imaging Techniques ◽  
Metal Plate ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Epistemic Practices ◽  
Transient Phenomena ◽  
Charles Wheatstone ◽  
Michael Faraday ◽  
William Henry Fox Talbot

ArgumentThis article explores the entangled histories of three imaging techniques in early nineteenth-century British physical science, techniques in which a dynamic event (such as a sound vibration or an electric spark) was made to leave behind a fixed trace on a sensitive surface. Three categories of “sensitive surface” are examined in turn: first, a metal plate covered in fine dust; second, the retina of the human eye; and finally, a surface covered with a light-sensitive chemical emulsion (a photographic plate). For physicists Michael Faraday and Charles Wheatstone, and photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, transient phenomena could be studied through careful observation and manipulation of the patterns wrought on these different surfaces, and through an understanding of how the imaging process unfolded through time. This exposes the often-ignored materiality and temporality of epistemic practices around nineteenth-century scientific images said to be “drawn by nature.”

scholarly journals Addendum to description of photometer

1869 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 369-370
Keyword(s):  
Polarized Light ◽  
The One ◽  
Charles Wheatstone

When I wrote that other experimentalists had already made use of the phenomena of polarized light for measuring the intensity of light, I was not aware that a photometer already existed in which the principle of the one above described was adopted. By the kindness of Sir Charles Wheatstone I have, within the last few days, been enabled to experiment with a photometer devised by M. Jamin, founded on the same principle. I have not yet succeeded in finding a printed account of this instrument, but a written one was supplied with it, and having been allowed to take it to pieces its construction is evident.

Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers: The Gendered Concertina in Victorian England, 1835–1870

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 1-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan W. Atlas
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Business Activity ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Landed Gentry ◽  
Charles Wheatstone

Victorian England held firm convictions about which instruments were appropriate for middle- and upper-class women, whether professionals or well-bred amateurs. Conventional wisdom holds that, until the informal ban on women playing the violin began to loosen in the 1870s, only three instruments were deemed suitable: piano, harp, and guitar. There was, however, a fourth instrument to which women had recourse: the English concertina, developed by the physicist Charles Wheatstone circa 1830.This study looks at the 978 women for whom there are 1,769 transactions-about 12% of the total-recorded in nine extant Wheatstone & Co. sales ledgers that list the firm's day-to-day sales from April 1835 to May 1870. It is in two parts: (1) an Introduction, which analyses the data presented in the Inventory from a demographic-sociological point of view and places Wheatstone's commerce with women into the context of its business activity as a whole; and (2) the Inventory (with three appendices), which lists every transaction for each of the 978 women, identifies as many of them as possible, and offers a miscellany of comments about both the women and the transactions. Briefly, the roster of Wheatstone's female customers reads like a list of Victorian England's rich-and-famous: the Duchess of Wellington and 146 other members of the titled aristocracy (more than twice as many as their male counterparts), the fabulously wealthy philanthropist Angela Burdett Coutts, members of the landed gentry, and such mainstays of London's musical life as the guitarist Madame R. Sidney Pratten, the organist Elizabeth Mounsey, and the contralto Helen Charlotte Dolby, as well as a large number of Professors of Concertina.

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