Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/379

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SKETCH OF SIR CHARLES WHEATSTONE.
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uated by one central clock. In Comptes Bendus (1845), he explained the principle of an electro-magnetic chronoscope. Subjects connected with telegraphy and electricity are treated in papers entitled "Electro-magnetic Telegraph" (1 840); "Constants of Voltaic Circuit" (1843); "Meteorological Registers" (1844); "Submarine Cable of the Mediterranean" (1854-55); "Aluminium in Voltaic Series" (1854-55); "Automatic Telegraphy" (1859). To complete the list of his papers, we name a "Letter to Colonel Sabine on Meteorological Instruments" (1842); "Determination of Solar Time by Polarization" (1848); "Foucault's Rotation of the Earth" (1851); "Powers for Arithmetical Progression" (1854-'55); "Report on Captive Balloons" (1863).

Wheatstone was chosen Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1836. He was a juror in the class for heat, light, and electricity in the Paris Exposition Universelle, 1855, and was then appointed a knight of the Legion of Honor. In 1868 he received the honor of knighthood from Queen Victoria, and the same year was awarded the Copley medal by the Royal Society for his researches in acoustics, optics, electricity, and magnetism. He was made LL. D. by Edinburgh University in 1869. In 1873 he was elected a corresponding member of the Paris Académie des Sciences, in the place of Baron Liebig, deceased. He was also a member of the chief scientific associations and academies of Europe.

Prof Wheatstone was married in 1845, His death took place at Paris, on the 19th of October, 1875. He left a numerous family.

In a brief memoir published in the Academy, Mr. C. Tomlinson, who was an intimate friend of Wheatstone, states that the latter never obtained eminence either as a writer or as a lecturer: before a large audience he was nervous and hesitating, but in familiar conversation his ideas "would flow so pleasantly and so lucidly, that one could not help reflecting that, if all this had been put into a lecture, Wheatstone might have become a successful rival even of Faraday." On such occasions he spoke unreservedly of the scientific work in which he happened to be engaged, and in this way other men often pilfered his ideas, and took the credit to themselves. On one occasion at least, Wheatstone recognized his error, for he paid ten guineas for a piece of apparatus for the purpose of stopping the inventor's mouth, said "inventor" having derived the idea of it from Wheatstone himself.