Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/441

 A portrait of Wheatley, drawn by the younger [q. v.], is in the library of the Royal Academy.



WHEATLEY, WILLIAM (fl. 1315), divine and author. [See .]

WHEATLY, CHARLES (1686–1742), divine, born on 6 Feb. 1685–6, was the son of John Wheatly, a tradesman of London. His mother, whose maiden name was White, was a descendant of Ralph White, brother of Sir [q. v.], founder of St. John's College, Oxford. Charles was entered at Merchant Taylors' school on 9 Jan. 1698–9, and matriculated from St. John's College, Oxford, on 28 March 1705. He was elected a fellow in 1707, and graduated B.A. on 23 Jan. 1709–10, and M.A. on 28 March 1713, resigning his fellowship in the same year. On 24 May 1717 he was chosen lecturer of St. Mildred-in-the-Poultry, and in 1725 lecturer of St. Swithin, Londonstone. On 23 March 1725–6 he was instituted vicar of Brent Pelham, and on 1 April 1726 vicar of Furneaux Pelham in Hertfordshire. He died at Furneaux Pelham on 13 May 1742, and was buried in the parish church. He was twice married: first, on 16 Aug. 1713, to Maria (d. 10 Dec. 1724), daughter of William Findall of the Clarendon Press; secondly, to Mary, daughter of Daniel Fogg, rector of All Hallows Staining. His second wife survived him.

Wheatly was an industrious divine. The work by which he is chiefly remembered is ‘The Church of England Man's Companion, or a Rational Illustration of the Harmony … and Usefulness of the Book of Common Prayer,’ which first appeared in 1710 (Oxford, 8vo), and went through many editions, the latest being that published at Cambridge under the care of George Elwes Corrie in 1858. Wheatly was also the author of:
 * 1) ‘Bidding of Prayers before Sermon no mark of Disaffection to the present Government,’ London, 1718, 8vo; new edit. London, 1845, 8vo.
 * 2) ‘The Nicene and Athanasian Creeds … explained and confirmed by the Holy Scriptures,’ London, 1738, 8vo.
 * 3) ‘Fifty Sermons on Several Subjects, and Occasions,’ ed. John Berriman, London, 1753, 8vo.



WHEATSTONE, CHARLES (1802–1875), man of science and inventor, son of W. Wheatstone, a music-seller of Gloucester, was born at Gloucester in February 1802, and educated in a private school there. At the age of twenty-one he commenced business in London as a musical instrument maker. A few months after he contributed a paper to Thomson's ‘Annals of Philosophy’ on his early experiments on sound. Other papers followed, and among them was a description of his ‘kaleidophone.’ This consisted of steel wire of rectangular cross-section fixed to a heavy base and carrying a silver bead at the top. The times of vibration of the bead in two directions at right angles being regulated by the particular rectangular section of the wire, the bead could be made to describe very beautiful curves illustrating the combination of harmonic motions of different periods. His principal contribution to acoustics is a memoir on the so-called Chladni's figures, produced by strewing sand on an elastic plane and throwing it into vibration by means of a violin bow. This memoir was presented to the Royal Society in 1833, and subsequently published in their ‘Transactions.’ He showed that in square and rectangular plates every figure, however complicated, was the resultant of two or more sets of isochronous parallel vibrations; and by means of simple geometrical relations he carried out the principle of the ‘superposition of small motions’ without the aid of any profound mathematical analysis, and succeeded in predicting the curves that given modes of vibration should produce.

To the subjects of light and optics Wheatstone made several important contributions. The conception of the stereoscope, by which the appearance of solidity is obtained through the mental combination of two pictures, in dissimilar perspective, is entirely due to Wheatstone. In 1835 he read a paper on the ‘Prismatic Analysis of Electric Light’ before the British Association meeting at Dublin. He demonstrated the fact that the spectrum of the electric spark from different metals presented more or less numerous rays of definite refrangibility, producing a series of lines differing in position and colour from each other, and that thus the presence of a very minute portion of any given metal might be determined. ‘We have here,’ he said, ‘a mode of discriminating metallic bodies more readily than by chemical examination, and which may hereafter be employed for useful purposes.’ This remark is