Invention Timeline - Sir Charles Wheatstone, English Inventor; Inventor of the Stereoscope and Established the Philosophy of Binocular Vision
b. February, 1802 and d. October 19, 1875
English inventor. He invented the stereoscope and established the philosophy of binocular vision. To him and (Sir) William Fothergill Cooke are we indebted for the elctric telegraph. They elaborated the five-needle and the two-needle telegraph which came into general use. He invented the magneto-electric letter-showing telegraph, a system of electro-magnetic clocks, a cryptograph or secret despatch writer, supposed to be indecipherable. He invented electric chronographs, automatic instruments of record, instruments for measuring electricity and electrical resistance, including the “rheostat.” In 1819 he invented his magic lyre, called the “telephone.” In 1866 he made the first self-exciting electric machine; and in 1867 he read a paper before the Royal Society on the reaction principle in dynamo machines.
Away, away through the sightless air-
Stretch forth your iron thread;
For I would not dim my sandals fair
With the dust ye lamely tread;
Ay rear it up on its million piers-
Let it reach the world around,
And the journey ye make in a hundred years
I’ll clear at a single bound!
—The Song of Lightning: George W. Cutter
