1493
newly opened daguerreotype studio, where he had a pair
of daguerreotype portraits of Beard’s son taken to his
specifi cations, and in 1842 Wheatstone commissioned
Antoine-François-Jean Claudet in London and Louis
Armand Hippolyte Fizeau in Paris to produce stereo
daguerreotype pairs. However, he did not publicize any
of these experiments.
By this time Sir David Brewster had devised an alter-
native stereoscope, somewhat similar to opera glasses in
construction and employing lenses instead of mirrors.
Brewster’s highly marketable refracting stereoscope
essentially determined the design parameters of stereo
cameras and the standardized format of stereograph
cards. Wheatstone had little involvement in the question
of stereophotography once it became commercialized.
In 1858 Brewster drew him into a dispute about the
originality of the stereoscope, which the two scientists
argued in letters to the Times. As this was not a patent
dispute, no money was at stake; and the general con-
sensus among commentators was that Wheatstone had
proposed the theory and invented a device to prove it,
while Brewster had refi ned the device so as to transform
it from a philosophical toy into a viable commodity.
Wheatstone did not, in any case, need to earn money
from the stereoscope. He had invested wisely in the
Hammersmith Bridge Company and in various British
and American mining concerns. Most signifi cantly, he
had taken care to patent (with William Cooke; 1860–
1879) various improvements to the electric telegraph,
the technology for which he is best known today. He
carried out experiments with submarine telegraphy at
Swansea Bay, in 1844, with photographic pioneer John
Dillwyn Llewellyn. Other achievements include the
Wheatstone Bridge (1843), which accurately measures
electrical resistance; and the Playfair cipher, a crypto-
graphic method based on digraph substitution.
Wheatstone married Emma West on 12 February
1847, and the couple had fi ve children. He was named
a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 1855 and
became a foreign associate of the Academy of Sciences
in 1873. He was knighted on 30 January 1868, and
throughout his career earned some thirty-four honorary
diplomas from a variety of institutions, including Oxford
and Cambridge. Wheatstone died in Paris on 19 October
1875, leaving his collection of books and instruments
to King’s College.
Britt Salvesen
Biography
Charles Wheatstone was born on 6 February 1802, the
son of a Gloucester music seller. He entered the musi-
cal instrument-making trade in London, but early made
a name for himself in scientifi c circles by publishing
his experiments on sound. In 1834, at age 34, he was
appointed professor of experimental physics at King’s
College, London, where he conducted research on
acoustics, optics, and electricity. He made an important
contribution to photographic history with his invention,
announced in 1838, of the refl ecting stereoscope. In the
early 1840s, Wheatstone called on various pioneers of
photography to produce experimental pairs of calotypes
and daguerreotypes produced for the stereoscope. Other
technological innovations with which Wheatstone is
associated include telegraphy, electric chronography,
and cryptography. He was elected to the Royal Society
in 1836 and knighted in 1868. He died in Paris on 19
October 1875.
See also: History: 2. 1826–1839; Philosophical
Instruments; and Stereoscopy.Further Reading
Bowers, Brian, Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS 1802–1875, London:
HMSO, 1975.
“Charles Wheatstone.” Proceedings of the Royal Society 24
(1875–76): xvi–xxvii.
Joseph, Steven F., “Wheatstone’s Double Vision.” History of
Photography 3/4 (October/December 1984:.329–332
Wade, Nicholas J. Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision, London:
Academic Press, 1983.
Wheatstone, Charles, “Description of the Kaleidophone, or
Phonic Kaleidoscope: A New Philosophical Toy, for the Il-
lustration of Several Interesting and Amusing Acoustical and
Optical Phenomena,” Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature,
and Art 23 (1827): 344–351
——, “Contributions to the Physiology of Vision.—Part the First.
On Some Remarkable, and Hitherto Unobserved, Phenomena
of Binocular Vision,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London 128, pt. 2, 371–94, 1838.
——, “Contributions to the Physiology of Vision.—Part the
Second. On Some Remarkable, and Hitherto Unobserved,
Phenomena of Binocular Vision,” Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society of London 14, 1–17, 1852.WHEELHOUSE, CLAUDIUS GALEN
(1826–1909)
As a recently qualifi ed doctor, Wheelhouse was the
medical attendant on a cruise yacht in the Mediterranean
in the late 1840s, and used the opportunity to produce
one of photography’s earliest travelogues, entitled
Photographic Sketches from the Shores of the Mediter-
ranean. One of the guests on board was Lord Lincoln,
later the Duke of Newcastle and Minister of War at the
time of the Crimean War.
In the three years in which he pursued photography as
a hobby, he travelled to Greece, Egypt, Malta, and Spain,
producing some of the earliest photographs of Thebes,
and fi ne images of Cairo, Athens, and Seville. Using the
calotype process, he photographed the greatest sites of
Egypt, at the same time as, or even before, the better-
known pioneers of early photography in the region.