1492
papermaking today, and is one of the largest employers
in Maidstone.
John Hannavy
See also: Atkins, Anna; Bridges, George Wilson; Hill;
David Octavius, and Robert Adamson; Jones, Calvert
Richard, Llewelyn, John Dillwynl; and Talbot,
William Henry Fox.
Further Reading
Anon, “Paper for Photography.” Liverpool and Manchester
Photographic Journal, vol 1 (1857): 214.
Arnold, H.J.P., William Henry Fox Talbot Pioneer of photography
and man of science, London: Hutchinson Benham, 1977.
Buckman, Rollin, The Photographic Work of Calvert Richard
Jones, London: The Science Museum, 1990.
Gernsheim, Helmut, The Origins of Photography, London:
Thames & Hudson, 1982.
Harris, Theresa Fairbanks, et al., Papermaking and the Art of
Watercolour in Eighteenth Century Britain: Paul Sandby
and the Whatman Paper Mill, Yale: Yale Center for British
Art, 2006.
Schaaf, Larry, The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Tal-
bot, Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press,
2000.
WHEATSTONE, CHARLES (1802–1875)
English physicist and inventor
Sir Charles Wheatstone was born in Gloucester on 6
February 1802, the son of W. Wheatstone, a music seller.
He attended a local private school, where he early mani-
fested an interest in mathematics and physics. At the age
of 21, he and his brother established a musical instru-
ment-making business in London, a trade that allowed
him to pursue his experiments with devices to measure
and record sound. Wheatstone’s fi rst scientifi c paper,
entitled “New Experiments on Sound,” appeared in
1823, and his acoustical research continued with his in-
vention of the concertina and a small form of accordion.
In 1828 he presented the kaleidophone, a philosophical
instrument that demonstrates the regularity of acoustic
patterns by visual means. Although not intended to be
a marketable device, the kaleidophone had utilitarian
heirs in the photometer and the phenakistiscope, which
likewise depend on the persistence of vision.
Wheatstone was part of a new generation of “natural
philosophers” who believed in the value of practical
research. For him, the construction of a functional de-
vice was both a means of working out an idea and an
end in itself—a method that would prove central to the
emerging discipline of physics. In 1834, still listed as a
“musical instrument maker,” he was appointed profes-
sor of experimental physics at King’s College, London.
He was only 32 years old. Hampered by acute shyness,
Wheatstone seldom lectured after his fi rst year in the
WHATMAN, JAMES & CO.
post, instead using the institutional resources provided
by his professorship to continue his research. Yet he
was not socially or intellectually isolated. His publica-
tions in various scientifi c journals earned him immense
respect (and election to the Royal Society in 1836); and
he maintained close friendships with colleagues such
as Michael Faraday and Sir John Herschel, and with
artists including John Martin and George Cruickshank.
Martin’s son recalled that Wheatstone’s home at 19,
Park Crescent was “one of the most scientifi c and the
most charming in the metropolis, and the resort of all
distinguished in art, science or literature.”
Wheatstone’s importance for photographic history
lies in his invention of the stereoscope. He apparently
constructed prototypes as early as 1831, and presented it
formally to the Royal Society in 1838. The stereoscope
illustrated Wheatstone’s revolutionary idea that the per-
ception of solidity depends on the mental combination of
the different images seen by the two eyes—the principle
of binocular vision. The device itself is a symmetrical
arrangement of mirrors (hence its common designation
as a “refl ecting stereoscope”) and easels. In the center
of a platform, two upright mirrors are placed at a 90°
angle to one another, with two upright easels (to which
images are affi xed) placed at equal distances from the
mirrors. The viewer places the eyes close to the verti-
cal axis, where the mirrors are fi xed together; looking
at refl ections of two fl at pictures in the mirrors, one
perceives a single, three-dimensional image about 6 to
8 inches away from the face. Wheatstone initially used
pairs of simple line drawings—free of artistic conven-
tions for indicating three-dimensionality—and predicted
that more complex images might be introduced to even
greater effect. The nearly simultaneous invention of
photography immediately suggested itself as the ideal
means of achieving such images.
The fact that Wheatstone did not comment on his
own use of photography until 1852 has resulted in
some confusion about the date and maker of the fi rst
stereoscopic photographs. Wheatstone’s correspondence
with William Henry Fox Talbot proves that the latter
did make some experimental calotypes for use in the
refl ecting stereoscope by December 1840. During this
initial period of trial and error, before the development
of stereo cameras, successive exposures were made from
slightly different positions with a single camera to pro-
duce a stereo pair. Wheatstone explained to Talbot that
his photographs differed by too great an angle; he also
pointed out that the two pictures must be taken under
conditions when shadows would fall in exactly the same
way in each. Experiments resumed in August 1841,
when Henry Collen, under Wheatstone’s direction,
produced calotype portrait and still-life pairs. Earlier
in the year, in the spring or summer, Wheatstone had
gone with John Frederick Goddard to Richard Beard’s