instruments for measuring electricity and electrical resistance, including the ‘rheostat.’ It was he who called attention to Christy's combination of wires, now commonly known as ‘Wheatstone's bridge,’ in which an electric balancing of the currents is obtained, and worked out its applications to electrical measurement. He was one of the first in this country to appreciate the importance of Ohm's simple law of the relation between electromotive force, resistance of conductors, and resulting current—the law which is today the foundation of all electrical engineering.
Wheatstone was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1836, a chevalier of the legion of honour in 1855, and a foreign associate of the Académie des Sciences in 1873. On 2 July 1862 he was created D.C.L. by the university of Oxford, and in 1864 LL.D. by the university of Cambridge. He moreover possessed some thirty-four distinctions or diplomas conferred upon him by various governments, universities, and learned societies. On 30 Jan. 1868 he was knighted.
Though nominally professor of natural philosophy at King's College, London, he seldom lectured after 1840, and indeed was an indifferent teacher. He suffered through life from an almost morbid timidity in presence of an audience. He died in Paris on 19 Oct. 1875, and was buried in the cemetery at Kensal Green. He was married, on 12 Feb. 1847, to Emma, daughter of J. West, and had a family of five children. He left his collection of books and instruments by will to King's College, London, where they are preserved in the Wheatstone Laboratory. A portrait, drawn in chalk by Samuel Laurence, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Wheatstone contributed to numerous scientific journals and publications. All his published papers were collected in one volume and published in 1879 by the Physical Society of London.
[Obituary notice in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 1876, xxiv. pp. xvi–xxvii; Nature, 1876, xiii. 501, App. p. xxvii; Extracts from the Private Letters of the late Sir W. F. Cooke, 1895; Fahie's History of Electric Telegraphy, 1884; obituary notice, Telegraphic Journal, 15 Nov. 1875, iii. 252.]
WHEELER. [See also Wheler.]
WHEELER, DANIEL (1771–1840), quaker missionary, son of William Wheeler of Lower Grosvenor Street, London, by Sarah, his wife, was born there on 27 Nov. 1771. His father, a wine merchant, died when young Wheeler was about six. He lost his mother six years later, being then at a boarding school at Parson's Green. A situation was obtained for him on board a merchant ship trading to Oporto, but after two or three voyages he entered the royal navy as a midshipman, being then under fourteen. He was soon promoted to a flag-ship, but abandoned the sea after six years, and, having squandered all his pay, enlisted as a private soldier in a regiment ordered to Ireland. In a year or two he was drafted into one of the new regiments raised to fight the French, and sailed for Flanders to join the British army under command of the Duke of York. Later, obtaining a commission in a regiment destined for the West Indies, he sailed about September 1795 under Sir Ralph Abercromby [q. v.]
In 1796 Wheeler quitted the army, and settled at Handsworth Woodhouse, near Sheffield, with his elder sister, Barbara, who had married William Hoyland, a quaker (see Annual Monitor, 1831, p. 109). In two years he was received as a member of the society, and embarked in the seed trade in Sheffield. About 1809 he retired to a farm in the country, where he began to prepare himself for a future life of ministry. He was recognised a minister in 1816.
The emperor Alexander I of Russia having during a visit to England visited a Friend's farm, and desiring a manager of that persuasion for his establishment at Ochta, Wheeler in 1817 proceeded to St. Petersburg, saw the czar, and explained to him the leaning he had for two years felt towards Russia as a sphere of missionary labour. Returning to England, he wound up his affairs, and with implements, seeds, and cattle, in addition to his wife, family, and servants—in all twenty persons—left Hull for St. Petersburg on 22 June 1818.
Besides the tsar's farm, he was soon appointed to the management of an estate belonging to the dowager empress, consisting, like the other, chiefly of swamp. This, after being thoroughly drained, was divided into farms of thirty to a hundred acres each, which were let to peasants at moderate rents, a portion in each district being kept as a model farm. Over three thousand acres were in cultivation under Wheeler's own eye. The little quaker meeting he established was visited by William Allen (1770–1843) [q. v.], Stephen Grellett, and Thomas Shillitoe [q. v.], with whom Wheeler in 1825 returned to England for three months, attending Dublin and London yearly meetings. After his return he lost his good friend Alexander I.
About September 1828 Wheeler removed
