Charles Wheatstone

Sir Charles Wheatstone [ˈwiːtstən] (* 6. February 1802 in Gloucester, † 19. October 1875 in Paris) was a British physicist.

After the attendance of a Privatschule Wheatstone worked itself into the handicraft of its father, the instrument making,. It exercised this activity starting from 1823 in London . 1834 he became a professor for experimental physics at the King' s college in London and 1836 member of the Royal Society. After honors in different countries 1868 its collection followed into the nobility.

Wheatstone began early with physical-acousticExperiments, in which it examined the sound transmission, standing waves and music instruments. 1828 it invented the forerunner ( the Symphonium) the accordion-similar Konzertina and sketched to 1833 in one the Royal Society submitted paper the principle of the overlay of small movements for the Chladni sound figures. It turnedthen the optics and electro-technology too and the meaning of the bridge connection invented by Samuel Hunter Christie for the accurate measurement of electrical resistances , which admits later than Wheatstone measuring bridge became , recognized itself 1833.

1840 it invented one infinitely variable resistance (rheostat) and 1833 the Spiegelstereoskop, with which it determined the spectral lines of spark discharges. 1834 determined Wheatstone for the first time the propagation rate of the electric current in metallic leaders. In the following it developed two Telegrafiegeräte together with the electrical engineer William Cooke - the Nadeltelegrafen and the Zeigertelegrafen. The latter found spreadApplication and was displaced later of the Morsetelegrafie. The sending and receipt device of the Zeigertelegrafen consisted of the movement of a pointer to individual letters and numbers, which a different in each case number of current draws caused. 1854 invented Wheatstone the Playfair - procedures for the manual coding of messages.

Wheatstoneand his friend baron Playfair von St. Andrew operated the Kryptografie as hobby. At that time private announcements in coded form often appeared in the Londoner Time. The two made themselves a fun to decode these secret messages. Particularly the announcements of Liebespaaren had done it to them. Wheatstonedeveloped a manual coding procedure, which was based on pairs of letters. Playfair published it received later and in such a way this procedure to its names.

see also

to physics - cryptology - cryptograph