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 Medical-Surgical Nursing Assessment and
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Test Bank for Medical-Surgical Nursing Assessment and Management of
Clinical Problems, Single Volume, 10th Edition, Lewis, Bucher,
Heitkemper, Harding, Kwong, Roberts,

Table of Contents

Section One – Concepts in Nursing Practice

1. Professional Nursing Practice

2. Health Disparities and Culturally Competent Care

3. Health History and Physical Examination

4. Patient and Caregiver Teaching

5. Chronic Illness and Older Adults

6. Stress and Stress Management

7. Sleep and Sleep Disorders

8. Pain

9. Palliative Care at End of Life

10. Substance Use Disorders

Section Two – Pathophysiologic Mechanisms of Disease

11. Inflammation and Wound Healing

12. Genetics and Genomics

13. Altered Immune Responses and Transplantation

14. Infection and Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection

15. Cancer

16. Fluid, Electrolyte, and Acid-Base Imbalances

Section Three – Perioperative Care

17. Preoperative Care

18. Intraoperative Care

19. Postoperative Care

Section Four – Problems Related to Altered Sensory Input

20. Assessment of Visual and Auditory Systems

21. Visual and Auditory Problems

22. Assessment of Integumentary System

23. Integumentary Problems

24. Burns

Section Five – Problems of Oxygenation: Ventilation

25. Assessment of Respiratory System

26. Upper Respiratory Problems

27. Lower Respiratory Problems

28. Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases

Section Six – Problems of Oxygenation: Transport

29. Assessment of Hematologic System

30. Hematologic Problems

Section Seven – Problems of Oxygenation: Perfusion

31. Assessment of Cardiovascular System

32. Hypertension

33. Coronary Artery Disease and Acute Coronary Syndrome

34. Heart Failure

35. Dysrhythmias

36. Inflammatory and Structural Heart Disorders

37. Vascular Disorders

Section Eight – Problems of Ingestion, Digestion, Absorption, and

Elimination

38. Assessment of Gastrointestinal System

39. Nutritional Problems

40. Obesity

41. Upper Gastrointestinal Problems

42. Lower Gastrointestinal Problems

43. Liver, Pancreas, and Biliary Tract Problems

Section Nine – Problems of Urinary Function

44. Assessment of Urinary System

45. Renal and Urologic Problems

46. Acute Kidney Injury and Chronic Kidney Disease

Section Ten – Problems Related to Regulatory and Reproductive

Mechanisms

47. Assessment of Endocrine System

48. Diabetes Mellitus

49. Endocrine Problems

50. Assessment of Reproductive System

51. Breast Disorders

52. Sexually Transmitted Infections

53. Female Reproductive and Genital Problems

54. Male Reproductive and Genital Problems

Section Eleven – Problems Related to Movement and Coordination

55. Assessment of Nervous System

56. Acute Intracranial Problems

57. Stroke

58. Chronic Neurologic Problems

59. Dementia and Delirium

60. Spinal Cord and Peripheral Nerve Problems

61. Assessment of Musculoskeletal System

62. Musculoskeletal Trauma and Orthopedic Surgery

63. Musculoskeletal Problems

64. Arthritis and Connective Tissue Diseases

Section Twelve – Nursing Care in Specialized Settings

65. Critical Care

66. Shock, Sepsis, and Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome

67. Acute Respiratory Failure and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

68. Emergency and Disaster Nursing

Appendix A – Basic Life Support for Health Care Providers

Appendix B – Nursing Diagnoses

Appendix C – Laboratory Reference Intervals

Glossary; Index
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the time of the formation of the Company till 1858, Professor
Wheatstone did not patent any improvement of telegraphic
apparatus. It has been said that during these years he entirely
ceased to be an inventor, and did not bring his great electrical
knowledge and inventive faculties into use. But this is not strictly
accurate, for circumstances had occurred which for a time diverted
his attention to another field for the application of electricity in which
he became a pioneer. About the year 1850 Sir Charles Pasley was
experimenting as to the explosion of submarine mines, and being
acquainted with Professor Wheatstone and Professor Daniell, he
informed them of his intention to use electricity for that purpose,
and sought their advice on the subject.
These eminent electricians took much interest in the proposal,
and under their superintendence the first arrangements for
exploding submarine charges were worked out in the laboratory of
King’s College. Acting on their advice Sir Charles Pasley used
electricity to explode the charges of gunpowder that blew up the
wreck of the Royal George at Spithead, which he was then engaged
in removing. In 1853 Sir John Burgoyne, Inspector General of
Fortifications, requested Captain Ward, R.E., to carry out some
experiments for determining the best form of voltaic battery for
military purposes. That officer then made himself fully acquainted
with the labours of Professor Wheatstone and others; and
afterwards reported in favour of a small battery seven inches long by
four wide; but in 1855 Professor Wheatstone, who was then a
member of the Select Committee on Ordnance, advised Sir John
Burgoyne to institute a further experimental inquiry into the relative
advantages of different sources of electricity. This investigation was
accordingly carried out by Professor Wheatstone and Professor Abel;
and in the course of it Wheatstone invented the first efficient
magneto-electric machine for the explosion of mines. It was called
the Wheatstone exploder, and it weighed 32 pounds. In a report on
their experiments, presented to the Secretary for War in 1860, it was
stated that by means of “a magneto-electric apparatus similar to
that used in the Chatham experiments, and termed by Mr.
Wheatstone the ‘Magnetic Exploder,’ the ignition at one time of
phosphide of copper fuzes, varying in number from two to twenty-
five, is certain, provided these fuzes are arranged in the branches of
a divided circuit; to attain this result it is only necessary to employ a
single wire insulated by a coating of gutta-percha or india-rubber
and simple metallic connections of the apparatus and the charge
with the earth.” They stated that from twelve to twenty-five charges
could be exploded simultaneously on land at a distance of 600 yards
from the apparatus; but the number of submarine charges which it
could explode at one time was more limited. During the next seven
years this apparatus was much used in gunnery experiments as well
as in mining; and several modifications of it were devised on the
Continent and in America. In 1867-8 Professor Wheatstone
constructed a more powerful modification of his magnetic exploder,
and Professor Abel ever afterwards spoke in the highest terms of the
ingenuity and industry with which his former colleague had worked
out the solution of this problem. He said that Professor Wheatstone
brought under the notice of the Government the successful labours
of Du Moncel, Savari, von Ebner, and others on the applications of
electricity to military purposes; and if he had only done that service,
he would have done an important work. But he did more; he
constructed the first practical and thoroughly efficient magneto-
electric machine for the explosion of mines.
Let us now pass from submarine mines to submarine cables.
There have been several claimants to the honour of being the first to
develop the idea of submarine telegraphy; and among them
Professor Wheatstone is entitled to honourable mention. One of the
first suggestions of a sub-aqueous telegraph was made by him. In
1840 he was giving evidence before a Select Committee of the
House of Commons, and after he had given an account of the short
line of telegraph from Paddington to Drayton, then the only line in
existence, he was questioned as to whether an electric telegraph
could be worked over a distance of 100 miles. He replied in the
affirmative. “Have you tried to pass the line through water?” said Sir
John Guest. “There would be no difficulty in doing so,” replied
Wheatstone; “but the experiment has not been made.” “Could you
communicate from Dover to Calais in that way?” “I think it perfectly
practicable,” replied the enthusiastic inventor. The subject thus
started for the first time in public was not new to Professor
Wheatstone; for it afterwards appeared from manuscripts in his
possession that he had given much consideration to it in 1837. Mr.
John Watkins Brett, who was also honourably connected with the
initiation of submarine telegraphy, stated in 1857 that he was
ignorant until three or four years previously that a line across the
Channel had been suggested years before by that talented
philosopher, Professor Wheatstone; and he exhibited at the Royal
Institution the original plans of Wheatstone drawn in 1840 for an
electric telegraph between Dover and Calais. The cable he then
designed was to be insulated by tarred yarn and protected by iron
wire; and his plan of laying down and picking up was also shown in
the drawing. The man who made the drawing for Wheatstone went
to Australia in 1841, and did not return. But there were other
evidences of its genuineness. Professor Wheatstone showed his
plans to a number of visitors at King’s College, and a Brussels paper
records that in the same year (1840) he repeated his experiments at
the Brussels Observatory in the presence of several literary and
scientific men, for the purpose of showing them the feasibility of
making a cable between Dover and Calais. For carrying out his plans
he designed three new machines, and minutely worked out the other
details of the undertaking. In a manuscript written in 1840 on “a
means of establishing an electric cable between England and
France,” he stated that the wire should form the core of a wrought
line well saturated with boiled tar, and all the lines be made into a
rope prepared in the same manner. His correspondence shows that
his plan became the subject of communications with persons of
authority during the next few years; and in the month of September,
1844, he and Mr. J. D. Llewellyn made experiments with submerged
insulated wires in Swansea Bay. They went out in a boat from which
they laid a wire to Mumblehead Lighthouse, and they tested various
kinds of insulation. These experiments were so successful that
Wheatstone returned to his original Channel project. His idea, says
Mr. R. Sabine, was to inclose the wire, insulated with worsted and
marine glue, in a lead pipe; and for some time he was engaged in
making inquiries as to the nature of the bed of the Channel and the
action of the tides, as well as experiments with the metals he
proposed to use. There is also evidence to show that in 1845 he
proposed to use gutta percha in the manufacture of his proposed
cable. It is said that gutta percha was first brought to England in the
previous year, and there was such a demand for the small quantity
then available that he could not get what he wanted of it.
In June 1846, the Times announced, in reference to a statement
made “some time ago that a submarine telegraph was to be laid
down across the English Channel, by which an instantaneous
communication could be made from coast to coast,” that the Lords
Commissioners of the Admiralty, with a view of testing the
practicability of this undertaking had now approved of the projector’s
laying down a submarine telegraph across the harbour of
Portsmouth, from the house of the admiral in the dockyard to the
railway terminus at Gosport. “By this means there will be a direct
communication from London to the official residence of the Port-
Admiral at Portsmouth, whereas at present the telegraph does not
extend beyond the terminus at Gosport, the crossing of the harbour
having been hitherto deemed an insurmountable obstacle.... In a
few days after the experiment has been successfully tested at
Portsmouth, the submarine telegraph will be laid down across the
Straits of Dover under the sanction of both the English and French
Governments.” There is evidence extant to show that Professor
Wheatstone was in the previous year in communication with the
Admiralty on the subject of a cable across the Channel. It was on
the twenty-fifth of the same month in which the above remarks were
published that the Corn Law Importation Bill was carried through the
House of Lords; and on the twenty-ninth the Duke of Wellington in
the House of Lords and Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons
announced the resignation of the Government. Changes of
Government, the famine in Ireland, and the great commercial panic
that followed were of more absorbing interest than the laying of a
submarine cable. At all events the small cable across Portsmouth
Harbour was not laid till 1847. It was then stated that an offer made
to the Admiralty to lay down a telegraph inclosed in metallic pipes
was found to be impracticable. The successful cable had the
appearance of an ordinary rope which was coiled into one of the
dockyard boats, and as the boat was pulled across the telegraph
rope was paid out over the stern, an operation that occupied a
quarter of an hour. It worked satisfactorily.
Professor Wheatstone, in an agreement which he made with Mr.
Cooke in April 1843, reserved to himself authority to establish
“electric telegraph communication between the coasts of England
and France ... for his own exclusive profit.” In a subsequent
agreement dated October 1845, with reference to the sale of his
patents, it was provided that “Mr. Wheatstone will take the chair of a
committee of three, to take charge of the manufacture of the patent
telegraphic instruments, and the taking out and specifying future
patents and matters of the like nature, at a salary of 700l. a year,
and shall devote to such objects what time he shall think necessary.
It is also understood that a patent shall be applied for immediately
to secure Mr. Wheatstone’s improvements in the mode of
transmitting electricity across the water; that Mr. Wheatstone shall
superintend the trial of his plans between Gosport and Portsmouth;
and if these experiments prove successful, then in the practical
application of the improvements to the purpose of establishing a
telegraph between England and France, the terms on which such
telegraph is to be held being a matter of arrangement between the
proprietors of the English and French patents.”
But something more than the ingenuity of Professor Wheatstone
was needed to carry the projected cable across the Channel. It
required all the energy and enthusiasm of Mr. J. W. Brett to make it
an accomplished fact. He did for the submarine telegraph what Mr.
Cooke did for Wheatstone’s land telegraph in England, and he
always bore generous testimony to the initiatory efforts of Professor
Wheatstone. Mr. Brett, who was an inventor as well as an
entrepreneur, in 1845 offered to the Admiralty to connect Dublin
Castle by telegraph with Downing Street for a sum of £20,000, and
the offer being refused, he turned his attention to uniting together
France and England by a submarine line. In 1847 Louis Philippe
granted the requisite permission to land and work a cable on the
French coast; but the British public considered the scheme too
hazardous to give it financial support. Three years later he brought
the subject before Louis Napoleon, who was favourable to it.
Accordingly in 1850, when 2000l. were subscribed for the work, a
cable was made and laid. On August 28th, 1850, the paddle steamer
Goliath, carrying in her centre a gigantic drum, with thirty miles of
telegraph wire in a covering of gutta percha wound round it, started
from Dover about ten o’clock, with a crew of thirty men and
provisions for the day. The track in a direct line to Cape Grisnez had
been previously marked by buoys and flags on staves. As the
steamer moved along that track at the rate of four miles an hour, the
cable was continuously paid out; leaden weights affixed to it at
every one-sixteenth of a mile sank it to the bottom; and about eight
o’clock in the evening the work was done.
Taking up an elevated position at the Dover Railway, Mr. Brett was
able by the aid of a glass to distinguish the lighthouse and cliff at
Cape Grisnez. The declining sun, he says, “enabled me to discern
the moving shadow of the steamer’s smoke on the white cliff, thus
indicating her progress. At length the shadow ceased to move. The
vessel had evidently come to an anchor. We gave them half an hour
to convey the end of the wire to shore, and attach the printing
instrument, and then I sent the first electric message across the
Channel: this was reserved for Louis Napoleon. I was afterwards
informed that some French soldiers, who saw the slip of printed
paper running from the little telegraph instrument, bearing a
message from England, inquired how it could possibly have crossed
the Channel, and when it was explained that it was the electricity
which passed along the wire and performed the printing operation,
they were still incredulous. After several other communications, the
words ‘All well’ and ‘Good night’ were printed, and closed the
evening. In attempting to resume communication early next
morning, no response could be obtained.” The cable had broken.
“Knowing the incredulity expressed as to the success of the
enterprise, and that it was important to establish the fact that
telegraphic communication had taken place, I that night sent a
trustworthy person to Cape Grisnez, to procure the attestation of all
who had witnessed the receipt of the messages there; and the
document was signed by some ten persons, including an engineer of
the French Government who was present to watch the proceedings;
this was forwarded to the Emperor of the French, and a year of
grace for another trial was granted.”
Near the rugged coast of Cape Grisnez the wire had been cut
asunder about 200 yards out to sea; but though of short duration
the experiment was considered so encouraging that it was
determined to lay a much stronger cable next year, and to land it at
a more favourable part of the French coast. When next year came
the public were informed in the newspapers that the manufacture of
the submarine telegraph cable afforded another instance in which
rapidity of execution bordered on the marvellous, for “though the
telegraph-rope was not less than twenty-four miles in length, it was
completed in the short space of three weeks—an undertaking which
manual labour could scarcely effect in as many years.” This cable
was successfully laid, and on Thursday, the 13th of November, 1851,
communications passed between Dover and Calais. The connections,
however, with the land lines, giving direct communication between
London and Paris, were not completed till the following November. It
was remarked at the time as a singular coincidence that the day
chosen for the opening of the Submarine Telegraph was that on
which the Duke of Wellington attended in person to close the
Harbour sessions. It was accordingly resolved by the promoters that
his Grace on leaving Dover by the two o’clock train for London
should be saluted by a gun fired by the transmission of a current
from Calais. It was arranged that as the clock struck two at Calais
the requisite signal was to be passed; and, punctual to the moment,
a loud report reverberated on the water, and shook the ground with
some force. It was then evident that the current had fired a 22-
pounder loaded with 10 lbs. of powder, and the report had scarcely
ceased ere it was taken up from the heights by the military who, as
usual, saluted the departure of the Duke with a round of artillery.
Guns were then fired successively on both coasts; Calais firing the
guns at Dover, and Dover returning the compliment to Calais.
Professor Wheatstone also did some useful work in connection
with the first Atlantic cables. In 1855 Professor Faraday was
explaining the subject of induction at the Royal Institution, when it
was mentioned to him that a current was obtained from a gutta
percha covered wire, 300 miles long, half an hour after contact with
the battery. “I remember,” says Mr. J. W. Brett in 1857, “speaking to
him on the subject, and inquiring if he did not believe that this
difficulty was to be overcome, and I received from him every
encouragement to hope it might; but it at once became necessary
that this point should be cleared up, or it would be folly to pursue
the subject of the union of America with this country by electricity. I
at once earnestly urged on Mr. Whitehouse to take up this subject,
and pursue it independently of every other experiment, and a
successful result was at last arrived at on 1000 miles and upwards of
a continuous line in the submarine wires in the several cables, when
lying in the docks. It did not rest upon one, but many thousand
experiments.” But these experiments did not solve the problem,
which exercised the ingenuity of the greatest electricians of the age.
Professor Wheatstone conducted several series of experiments to aid
in its solution. He showed that iron presented eight times more
resistance to the electric current than copper did, and that
differences in the size and quality of conductors and insulators
affected the transmission of signals.
In 1859 the Board of Trade selected Professor Wheatstone as a
member of the committee appointed to inquire into the subject of
submarine cables with special reference to the Atlantic cable. To that
committee he supplied an elaborate report which would fill fifty
pages of this volume, “On the circumstances which influence the
inductive discharge of submarine telegraph cables.” He was also a
member of the scientific committee appointed in 1864 to advise the
Atlantic Telegraph Company as to the manufacture, laying, and
working of the cables of 1865 and 1866.
In 1848 Lord Palmerston made a remark about the telegraph that
was at the time regarded as a jest. He said the day would come
when a minister, if asked in Parliament whether war had broken out
in India, would reply, “Wait a minute, I’ll just telegraph to the
Governor General, and let you know.” At that time two or three
months usually elapsed between the sending of a message and the
receipt of an answer from Calcutta to London; and hence the remark
of Lord Palmerston was derided as a joke. But in 1855 the electric
telegraph performed a feat which astonished the nations of Europe.
On the 2nd of March the Czar Nicholas died at St. Petersburg at one
o’clock; and the same afternoon the Earl of Clarendon announced
his death in the House of Lords—the intelligence having been
received by two different lines of telegraph. Two years afterwards
two different schemes were promoted for connecting Europe with
India by telegraph; but this was not successfully accomplished till
eight years afterwards. Three years before the Palmerstonian jest of
1848 became an accomplished fact, Professor Wheatstone
communicated to Lord Palmerston the effects of a new telegraphic
invention which seemed nearly as incredible as the idea of
telegraphing to India appeared a few years previously. The noble
lord was at Oxford University receiving his honorary degree, and was
watched by Sir Henry Taylor at an evening party as the Professor
gave him a somewhat prolonged explanation of his new invention for
facilitating telegraphy. “The man of science,” says Sir Henry, “was
slow, the man of the world seemed attentive; the man of science
was copious, the man of the world let nothing escape him; the man
of science unfolded the anticipated results—another and another, the
man of the world listened with all his ears: and I was saying to
myself, ‘His patience is exemplary, but will it last for ever?’ when I
heard the issue:—‘God bless my soul, you don’t say so! I must get
you to tell that to the Lord Chancellor.’ And the man of the world
took the man of science to another part of the room, hooked him on
to Lord Westbury, and bounded away like a horse let loose in a
pasture.”
If it be true that men of the world regarded with impatience the
ingenious devices of Professor Wheatstone, very different was the
reception accorded to them by the prince of modern scientists. In
the beginning of the following year (19th January, 1858) Professor
Faraday wrote the following letter to him: “While thinking of your
beautiful telegraphs it occured to me that perhaps you would not
think ill of my proposing to give an account of the magneto-electric
telegraph and the recording telegraph on a Friday evening after
Easter—about the end of May or June. I suppose all will be safe by
that time. I think that by the electric lamp and a proper lens, we
might throw the image of the face on to the wall, and so we may
illustrate the action to the whole audience.” The proposed lecture
was delivered by Professor Faraday in the Royal Institution on June
11th, 1858, and his subject was “Wheatstone’s electric telegraph in
relation to science (being an argument in favour of the full
recognition of science as a branch of education).” That lecture was
very interesting, not only as indicating the progress made in the
telegraph, but as showing his high appreciation of the inventive
ingenuity which had accelerated that progress. So far from
representing the telegraph as “no invention” he spoke of it as a
series of inventions. “It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing,” he
said; “not to despise the small beginnings, for they precede of
necessity all great things in the knowledge of science, either pure or
applied. It teaches a continual comparison of the small and great,
and that under differences almost approaching the infinite: for the
small as often comprehends the great in principle as the great does
the small.” As to the work done by Professor Wheatstone, he said:
“Without referring to what he had done previously, it may be
observed that in 1840 he took out patents for electric telegraphs,
which included, amongst other things, the use of the electricity from
magnets at the communicators—the dial face—the step-by-step
motion—and the electro-magnet at the indicator. At the present
time, 1858, he has taken out patents for instruments containing all
these points; but these instruments are so altered and varied in
character above and beyond the former, that an untaught person
could not recognise them. In the first instruments powerful magnets
were used, and keepers[7] with heavy coils associated with them.
When magnetic electricity was first discovered, the signs were
feeble, and the mind of the student was led to increase the results
by increasing the force and size of the instruments. When the object
was to obtain a current sufficient to give signals through long
circuits, large apparatus were employed, but these involved the
inconveniences of inertia and momentum; the keeper was not set in
motion at once, nor instantly stopped; and if connected directly with
the reading indexes, these circumstances caused an occasional
uncertainty of action. Prepared by its previous education, the mind
could perceive the disadvantages of these influences, and could
proceed to their removal.... The alternations or successions of
currents produced by the movement of the keeper at the
communicator, pass along the wire to the indicator at a distance;
there each one for itself confers a magnetic condition on a piece of
soft iron, and renders it attractive or repulsive of small permanent
magnets; and these, acting in turn on a propelment, cause the index
to pass at will from one letter to another on the dial face. The first
electro-magnets, i.e., those made by the circulation of an electric
current round a piece of soft iron, were weak; they were quickly
strengthened, and it was only when they were strong that their laws
and actions could be successfully investigated. But now they are
required small, yet potential; and it was only by patient study that
Wheatstone was able so to refine the little electro-magnets at the
indicator as that they shall be small enough to consist with the fine
work there employed, able to do their appointed work when excited
in contrary directions by the brief currents flowing from the original
common magnet, and unobjectionable in respect of any resistance
they might offer to these tell-tale currents. These small transitory
electro-magnets attract and repel certain permanent magnetic
needles, and the to-and-fro motion of the latter is communicated by
a propelment to the index, being there converted into a step-by-step
motion. Here everything is of the finest workmanship; the
propelment itself requires to be watched by a lens, if its action is to
be observed; the parts never leave hold of each other; the holes of
the axes are jewelled; the moving parts are most carefully balanced,
a consequence of which is that agitation of the whole does not
disturb the parts, and the telegraph works just as well when it is
twisted about in the hands, or placed on board a ship or in a railway
carriage, as when fixed immovably. All this delicacy of arrangement
and workmanship is introduced advisedly; for the inventor considers
that refined and perfect workmanship is more exact in its action,
more unchangeable by time and use, and more enduring in its
existence, than that which, being heavier, must be coarser in its
workmanship, less regular in its action, and less fitted for the
application of force by fine electric currents.... Now,” added Faraday,
“there was no chance in these developments;—if there were
experiments, they were directed by the previously acquired
knowledge;—every part of the investigation was made and guided
by the instructed mind.... The beauty of electricity, or of any other
force, is not that the power is mysterious and unexpected, but that it
is under law, and that the taught intellect can even now govern it
largely.”
The instrument which Faraday described in such appreciative
terms has superseded the step-by-step instrument which was
invented in 1840. The new instrument, like the old one, has a dial
with the letters of the alphabet round the edge, and when in
operation the indicating hand or finger points successively to each
letter forming the message, which can thus be read by anyone. The
sending instrument also has a dial round which are the letters of the
alphabet, and projecting from each letter is a brass key or stud. The
new mechanism inside this instrument is so ingeniously designed
that when the sender of a message turns round a small handle
which puts in motion the magneto-electric apparatus so as to
generate electric currents, the indicating finger on the receiving dial
moves round till it is stopped at the desired letter. This stoppage is
effected by the sender depressing the brass stud which represents
the desired letter. By this depression of any particular stud, the
currents of electricity are cut off just when the indicating finger
reaches the letter on the receiving dial corresponding to that of the
depressed stud at the sending instrument; and the indicating finger
remains at that letter till the stud of another letter is depressed,
whereupon the indicating finger moves along the receiving dial till it
reaches again the letter corresponding to that of the depressed stud.
No knowledge of electrical science or of mechanics is needed to
work this instrument, the hidden mechanism of which cannot be
easily described in popular language. Surely it is an illustration of the
classic adage that the highest art is to conceal art.
The working of this instrument excelled all others in simplicity;
and at the same time Professor Wheatstone invented one which
exceeded all others in rapidity. The former became known as
Wheatstone’s A, B, C instrument, the latter as Wheatstone’s
automatic fast speed printing instrument. The latter is so
constructed that the passage of the current is regulated by means of
a perforated strip of paper. The apparatus consists of three parts—
the perforator, the transmitter, and the receiver. The perforator has
keys which when pressed down by an operator punch in a strip of
paper combinations of holes, which represent letters of the alphabet,
thus

One person working a perforator can simultaneously punch

duplicate messages, but only one strip of perforated paper can be
put into the transmitter, which draws it forward with a continuous
motion. Two small pins, one on each side, are underneath the strip
of paper, and whenever one of these pins comes to a perforated hole
it momentarily rises through it, and imparts sufficient electricity from
the battery to the telegraph wire to move a pen at the other end of
the wire, so as to make a mark in ink on a clean strip of paper
passing through the receiving instrument. The ink marks thus
produced in combinations represent letters of the alphabet, namely,

The receiver is thus a recording instrument so exact and sensitive

that it mechanically and rapidly imprints on a strip of paper dots,
dashes, and spaces, which, in a sense, correspond with the holes
perforated in the tape passing through the transmitter, at the other
end of the wire. When this apparatus was invented it was
represented as capable of forwarding messages at the rate of 500
letters per minute, being five times faster than any other system
then in use.
In 1868 the inventor stated that although for rapidity of
transmission his automatic instrument had never been surpassed, he
did not expect that the existing instruments would in all cases be
given up for it. He believed it would be very useful on all “lines of
great traffic,” and particularly on those lines over which newspaper
intelligence is sent. In 1870 the telegraph lines of the United
Kingdom were acquired by the Government—a step which Professor
Wheatstone advocated as the best means of cheapening messages
and extending the telegraph to places unapproached by the
Telegraph Companies. Let us see how his expectations have been
realised.
In 1872 Mr. Culley, the engineer-in-chief of the Telegraphic system
of the United Kingdom, stated that in order to increase the number
of messages which could be sent through the wires in a given time,
a very large use had to be made of the Wheatstone automatic
instrument, which was in use by the Electric Company before the
transfer to the Government. There were only four circuits then; but
in the two years following the transfer fifteen circuits were supplied
with that apparatus. In addition to these automatic circuits for
ordinary business, the Telegraph Department had also fitted up with
that system what they called the Western News circuit running from
London to Bristol, Gloucester, Cardiff, Newport, Exeter, and
Plymouth, the news being then sent to all these places
simultaneously, and at the rate of fifty to fifty-five words a minute. A
very great improvement had also been effected, at considerable
expense, in the single-needle instrument. A very large number of
inventions had been brought before the Department, and it might
have been hoped that very considerable advantage to the public
would have arisen from the breaking up of the monopoly of the
Companies and the private interests which almost all the officers had
in perpetuating the form of some old instrument. But Mr. Culley had
to report that not in any one instance had any apparatus or system
of signalling of practical value been laid before him. One system only
had been of such a nature as could possibly have any value, and he
said that one would have required fully ten years to mature before it
could be brought out.
Professor Wheatstone lived to see 140 of his automatic
instruments in use. In 1872 he applied to the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council for a prolongation of his patent; and it being then
stated that he had received £12,000 in 1870, when the transfer of
the telegraphs took place, the Government agreed to pay him an
additional sum of £9,200 in six yearly instalments as compensation
for his patent rights.
In 1879 Mr. Preece, the electrician to the Post Office, said that the
automatic transmitter “is an instrument of great delicacy and great
power; it is now used to an enormous extent in this country, and it is
one that we are improving every day. For instance, while about this
time last year we were able to transmit all our news to Ireland at the
rate of 60 words a minute, we are now doing it with ease at the rate
of 150 words a minute; and with the improvements which we have
now in hand, we shall be able next year to transmit nearly 200
words a minute.” This expectation was realised. Although experience
suggested improvements in nearly every part of the apparatus, the
leading principles remained the same. In 1885 Mr. Preece gave the
following account of the successive stages of the progress made: it
was capable of transmitting in 1877, 80 words per minute; in 1878,
100; in 1879, 130; in 1880, 170; in 1881, 190; in 1882, 200; in
1883, 250; in 1884, 350; in 1885, 420. It thus appears that if three
men were speaking at the same time, one of Wheatstone’s
automatic instruments could transmit the three speeches in the
same time that they were spoken, the instrument transmitting three
times as fast as one man could speak.
Towards the close of the first half century of the existence of the
telegraph, the Wheatstone automatic transmitter achieved the great
feat of transmitting 1,500,000 words from London on the night when
Mr. Gladstone explained his plan for giving self-government to
Ireland, On that occasion (April 8, 1886) one hundred Wheatstone’s
perforators were used in the Central Telegraph Office in London to
prepare the messages. Thirty of these perforators punched six slips
at once, thirteen punched three slips at once, thirty-one punched
two slips at once, and twenty-six punched single slips. The largest
number of words previously transmitted in one night was 860,000;
and to give some idea of what 1,500,000 words represent, it may be
added that if an average quick speaker like Mr. Gladstone were to
speak without any stoppage for a week, night and day, that would
just be about the number of words that he would utter, or that
another person could read aloud.

FOOTNOTES:
[7] The keeper or armature is the piece of iron which is placed
across the ends or poles of a horseshoe magnet.
 CHAPTER IV.
“A name, even in the most commercial nation, is one of
the few things which cannot be bought. It is the free gift of
mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted,
and is at last unwillingly bestowed. But this unwillingness only
increases desire in him who believes his merit sufficient to
overcome it.”—Dr. Johnson.

From the two preceding chapters it appears that Professor

Wheatstone was not only the inventor of the first electric telegraph
used in England, but that he at last invented the most perfect
transmitter of telegraphic intelligence. He not only nursed it from its
birth, but reared it to maturity; and the period that elapsed between
his first and last invention of telegraphic apparatus was exactly
twenty-one years. But this was not enough for his versatile mind to
accomplish. He had worked successfully as an inventor for seventeen
years before his first telegraph was invented, and he continued to
work at his favourite subjects for seventeen years after his last great
telegraphic invention. Having confined our attention in the last two
chapters almost exclusively to the progress of the telegraph, it
remains for us to follow the inventor into the bye-paths which he
now and then delighted to tread, as well as to follow his course
during his latter years along the highway of electrical science in
which his genius appeared to find its most congenial exercise.
It has already been explained that in the early years of his
electrical researches, he was one of the first men in England to draw
attention to the thermo-electric pile originally constructed by Nobili
and Melloni in 1831; it consisted of a bundle or pile of small plates of
bismuth and antimony, which when heated converts heat into
electricity. By connecting this pile by coils of wire with a
galvanometer (a movable needle) it becomes a delicate means of
indicating minute changes of temperature, the electricity generated
by heat moving the needle. This instrument can be affected by the
warmth of the hand held several yards away from it; and it is
believed that without it, as a thermoscope, the important discoveries
respecting radiant heat made by Professor Tyndall and others would
have been impossible. It has even been found possible by means of
this sensitive apparatus to estimate the amount of radiant heat
emitted by insects. In 1837 Professor Wheatstone predicted great
results from the thermo-electric pile as a source of electricity, and in
1865 he constructed a powerful thermo-electric battery of that
description. It was composed of sixty pairs of small bars, and it was
stated that by its action “a brilliant spark was obtained, and about
half an inch of fine platinum wire when interposed was raised to
incandescence and fused; water was decomposed, and a penny
electro-plated with silver in a few seconds; whilst an electro-magnet
was made to lift upwards of a hundredweight and a half.” This
thermo-electric battery may be said to have electrified the
imaginations of men of science, who saw visions and dreamt dreams
about its future. For instance, it was suggested that “like windmills,
thermo-electric batteries might be erected all over the country for
the purpose of converting into mechanical force, and thus into
money, gleams of sunshine which would be to them as wind to the
sails of a mill.” Many other attempts have been made to construct a
thermo-electric pile capable of being used as a generator of
electricity instead of the voltaic battery or the dynamo; and although
much progress was made in later years, the difficulty in the way, as
Lord Rayleigh observed in 1885, was the too free passage of heat by
ordinary conduction from the hot to the cold junction.
However, Professor Wheatstone, having once taken in hand the
production of electricity by an improved method, worked at the
problem until he solved it. The electrical invention that ranks next in
importance to the telegraph is the dynamo machine, and this also he
had a share in introducing and improving. Its first conception has
been claimed by different electricians. On the 4th of February, 1867,
two papers were read before the Royal Society, one by Sir William
Siemens, “On the conversion of dynamic into electrical force without
the use of permanent magnetism,” and the other by Professor
Wheatstone, “On the augmentation of the power of a magnet by the
reaction thereon of currents induced by the magnet itself.” Both
papers described the same discovery—the dynamo machine. The
instrument described by Professor Wheatstone was made of a strip
of soft iron, the core, fifteen inches long, bent in the form of a
horse-shoe, and wound round in the direction of its breadth by 640
feet of insulated copper wire (covered with silk). The keeper or
armature (the piece of iron extending across the ends of the horse
shoe magnet) was hollow at two sides for the reception of eighty
feet of insulated wire coiled lengthwise. The two wires being
connected so as to form a single circuit, and the armature made to
rotate in the opposite direction to that of the hands of a watch,
powerful electrical effects were produced. The electricity generated
by this motion of the armature soon made four inches of platinum
wire red-hot, and decomposed water. These effects were thus
explained by Professor Wheatstone: The electro-magnet always
retains a slight residual magnetism, so is always in the condition of a
weak permanent magnet; the motion of the armature occasions
feeble currents in its coils in alternate directions, which, brought into
the same direction, pass into the coil of the horse-shoe electro-
magnet in such a manner as to increase the magnetism of the iron
core; the strength of the magnet being thus increased, it produces in
its turn stronger currents in the coil of the armature; and this
alternate increase goes on until it reaches a maximum dependent on
the rapidity of the motion and the capacity of the magnet.
Sir William Siemens, whose paper was sent in ten days before
Professor Wheatstone’s, described a similar machine, but that they
were independent discoveries has never been questioned. It was
almost inevitable, however, that the question of priority should be
discussed. Mr. Robert Sabine, who defended the rights of Professor
Wheatstone, stated in 1877 that the time when “the idea of making
a machine which would work into itself occurred to Professor
Wheatstone, it is of course after his death impossible to determine,
unless some manuscript notes should turn out in evidence. I am also
unable to ascertain when the first experimental apparatus was made
and tried. We must therefore start from the later stage, viz., the
finished machine which was exhibited at the Royal Society in
February, 1867.” It is interesting, however, to go a few years further
back, and to find that the idea of producing powerful electrical
effects by mechanical means was present in the mind of Professor
Wheatstone a quarter of a century before it was announced as an
accomplished fact. Early in 1843 he showed Professor A. De La Rive
his new electro-magnetic telegraph; and in publishing an account of
it the French Professor said that he (Wheatstone) “has endeavoured
to apply the same principle to the production of a useful mechanical
force; but he does not seem to me to have completely succeeded on
this point; and I am convinced that a long period must yet elapse
before steam is in this respect dethroned by electricity.”
Now it is a remarkable fact that at that very time there was a plan
of a dynamo in MS., which unfortunately did not attract attention till
thirty years afterwards. Dr. Gloesener, professor of physics at Liège
University, in an extant MS. which was dated 20th of April, 1842, and
which remained in the custody of public bodies in Belgium from that
date, described electro-magneto oscillating and rotatory motors
which he designed, and which he spoke of “as destined to take the
place of steam and other motors.” In honour of this inventor, who
died unrewarded for his prescience, the Electrical Congress at Paris
admitted his daughter as their only lady member. However, Professor
Wheatstone did not announce the practical realisation of his idea till
February, 1867. “The machines then exhibited,” continues Mr. R.
Sabine, “were made for Professor Wheatstone by Mr. Stroh in the
months of July and August, 1866. When they were finished, tried,
and approved of, they were in the usual course of business charged
for by Mr. Stroh on the 12th of September, 1866. Mr. S. A. Varley
says his machine (as it was exhibited at the Loan Collection) was
completed and tried at the end of September or the beginning of
October, 1866. Sir William Siemens says that his brother tried his
first experimental machine in December, 1866. It is clear therefore
that Professor Wheatstone’s machines—those exhibited at the Royal
Society—were completed, tried, and charged for, before the first
experimental machines of Sir W. Siemens or Mr. Varley were finished
or ready for trial. The date when the undefined idea of making any
machine first occurred to an inventor is of very little comparative
importance, unless the idea be productive of some evidence of its
existence, without which one would, I think, be inclined to suspect
that memory might after a lapse of years be a little treacherous.
Who had the first happy inspiration of a reaction machine we can
scarcely expect to know now. Of its fruits we have better evidence,
and I venture to think that the claims of the three inventors in
question stand thus:
“Professor Wheatstone was the first to complete and try the
reaction machine.
“Mr. S. A. Varley was the first to put the machine officially on
record in a provisional specification, dated 24th of December, 1866,
which was therefore not published till July, 1867.
“Dr. Werner Siemens was the first to call public attention to the
machine in a paper read before the Berlin Academy on the 17th of
January, 1867.”
In such cases the date of publication is generally regarded as the
date of discovery; but whoever was the first inventor of the dynamo,
it is now admitted that Professor Wheatstone’s machine was the
most complete. After explaining how the rotation of the armature
generated currents of electricity in the magnet, he stated that “a
very remarkable increase of all the effects, accompanied by a
diminution in the resistance of the machine, is observed when a
cross wire is placed so as to divert a great portion of the current
from the electro-magnet. Four inches of platinum wire, instead of
flashing into redness and then disappearing, remain permanently
ignited; the inductorium wire, which before gave no spark, now gave
one of a quarter of an inch in length; and other effects were
similarly increased.” Strange to say this discovery, announced in
1867, lay dormant till 1880, and then it was utilised by Sir William
Siemens so as to obviate the great fluctuations previously
experienced in electric-arc lighting. Till then the electric light often
flickered instead of shining steadily, and the cause of its irregularity
puzzled the electricians. In 1880 Sir William Siemens gave Professor
Wheatstone full credit for having suggested a remedy for this defect
in 1867.
Such an array of electrical inventions and discoveries was surely
enough for one man; but electricity was only one of the many
subjects that engaged his attention or exercised his ingenuity.
Having traced the progress of his electrical inventions over a period
of forty years, we must now collect some of the fruits of his labour in
other sciences during that period. After his initial success with the
electric telegraph in 1837, he began to publish in the following year
his Contributions to the Physiology of Vision, in which he gave the
results of experiments showing “that there is a seeming difference in
the appearance of objects when seen with two eyes, and when only
one eye is employed; and that the most vivid belief in the solidity of
an object of three dimensions arises from two perspective
projections of it being simultaneously presented to the mind.” At the
same time he gave a description of his newly-invented instrument
for illustrating these phenomena—the stereoscope, which was first
announced in 1838, and was improved in course of the next
fourteen years.
When he described the stereoscope to the British Association in
1838 and explained the scientific principle which it illustrated, Sir
David Brewster said he was afraid that the members could scarcely
judge—from the very brief and modest account given by Professor
Wheatstone of the principle and of the instrument devised for
illustrating it—of its extreme beauty and generality. He (Sir David)
considered it one of the most valuable optical papers which had
been presented to the Association. He observed that when taken in
conjunction with the law of visible direction in binocular vision, it
explained all those phenomena of vision by which philosophers had
been so long perplexed; and that vision in three dimensions received
the most complete explanation from Professor Wheatstone’s
researches. At the same time Sir John Herschel characterised
Professor Wheatstone’s discovery as one of the most curious and
beautiful for its simplicity in the entire range of experimental optics.
At the date of the publication of his experiments on binocular
vision, said Professor Wheatstone, the brilliant photographic
discoveries of Talbot, Niepce, and Daguerre had not been announced
to the world, as illustrating the phenomena of the stereoscope. He
could therefore at that time only employ drawings made by the
hands of the artists. “Mere outline figures, or even shade perspective
drawings of simple objects, did not present much difficulty; but it is
evidently impossible,” he says, “for the most accurate and
accomplished artist to delineate by the sole aid of his eye the two
projections necessary to form the stereoscopic relief of objects as
they exist in nature with their delicate differences of outline, light,
and shade. What the hand of the artist was unable to accomplish,
the chemical action of light, directed by the camera, is enabled to
effect. It was at the beginning of 1839, about six months after the
appearance of my memoir in the Philosophical Transactions, that the
photographic art became known, and soon after, at my request, Mr.
Talbot, the inventor, and Mr. Collen (one of the first cultivators of the
art) obligingly prepared for me stereoscopic Talbotypes of full-sized
statues, buildings, and even portraits of living persons. M. Quetelet,
to whom I communicated this application and sent specimens, made
mention of it in the Bulletins of the Brussels Academy of October
1841. To M. Fizeau and M. Claudet I was indebted for the first
daguerreotypes executed for the stereoscope.”
As indicating the relations that continued to exist between him
and Sir David Brewster on the subject of vision, it is worthy of
remark that in 1844 Professor Wheatstone brought before the British
Association some singular effects produced by certain colours in
juxtaposition. Observing that a carpet of small pattern in green and
red appeared in the gas-light as if all the parts of the pattern were in
motion, he had several patterns worked in various contrasted colours
in order to verify and study the phenomena. Both he and Sir David
Brewster brought to York separate communications on this subject,
and specimens of coloured rugwork to illustrate it; but on seeing
Professor Wheatstone’s specimens, Sir David withheld both his paper
and his illustrations, and simply made a few remarks on
Wheatstone’s paper, stating that when he came to York he did not
know that the phenomena were produced by any other colours but
red and green, and that he was indebted to Professor Wheatstone
for showing him that red and blue had the same effect. The
Professor accounted for it by saying that the eye retained its
sensibility for various colours during various lengths of time.
In the stereoscope designed by Professor Wheatstone mirrors
were used instead of lenses; and though the effect produced by
mirrors was similar to that which we now see by means of lenses, its
startling novelty did not excite popular interest. Indeed it was only
used by two or three Professors to illustrate optical phenomena; and
with that exception it might be said to have been unhonoured and
unused for several years. It was Sir David Brewster who proposed to
use lenses instead of mirrors, and thus gave to it the form in which it
eventually became popular; but even then its popularity might be
described as of foreign origin. In addressing the British Association
in 1848 on the theory of vision, Sir David Brewster said that the
solution of some problems that had long baffled opticians was
greatly facilitated by that beautiful instrument, the stereoscope of
Professor Wheatstone. Next year Sir David exhibited his new form of
the stereoscope before the British Association at Birmingham, and in
1850 he exhibited it at Paris, and explained it to M. Duboscq Soleil,
an optician of that city, who was so impressed with its advantages
that he began to manufacture it, and to call public attention to its
powers. One was also exhibited before the French Academy of
Sciences, who appointed a committee to examine it.
In 1849 Sir David Brewster offered his improvement in the
stereoscope gratuitously to opticians in Birmingham and London; but
they did not accept it; and it was only after it became an object of
wonder in France that it began to be appreciated in England. At the
Great Exhibition of 1851 M. Duboscq Soleil showed a beautiful
instrument together with a fine set of binocular daguerreotypes; and
another instrument by the same maker was presented by Sir David
Brewster to the Queen. In the same year some were exhibited at
one of the soirées of Lord Rosse, where they excited much interest.
The attention of English photographers being then directed to it,
photographic pictures and portraits began to be executed for it in
abundance. The stereoscope soon came to be in demand; it was
manufactured by English as well as French makers; and thus
became a favourite ornament or scientific curiosity. During the next
five years 500,000 stereoscopes were sold.
While Sir David Brewster did so much to make the stereoscope
popular, Professor Wheatstone was generally accredited with the
original invention. In 1849 the eminent French philosophers, MM. L.
Foucault and J. Regnault, stated in the Comptes Rendus that “in a
beautiful investigation on the vision of objects of three dimensions,
Professor Wheatstone states that when two visual fields, or the
corresponding elements of the two retinæ, simultaneously receive
impressions from rays of different refrangibility, no perception of
mixed colours is produced. The assertion of this able philosopher
being opposed to the opinion of the majority of those who have
attended to the same subject, we have thought it useful to repeat,
modify, and extend these experiments; and the stereoscope of
Professor Wheatstone offered a simple means of disentangling these
delicate observations of all complication capable of injuriously
affecting the accuracy of the physiological results.”
In an account of it published in London in 1851 it was truly stated
that the phenomena of vision had engaged the attention of the most
acute philosophers; and that the researches of Professor Wheatstone
had done more than those of any other man to explain the result of
single vision with a pair of eyes while under the influence of two
impressions; for in his stereoscope two images drawn perspectively
upon plane surfaces, when viewed at the angle of reflection appear
to be converted into a solid body, and to convey to the mind an
impression of length, breadth, and thickness. At the same time it
was explained that Sir David Brewster modified the instrument and
imitated the mechanical conditions of the eye by cutting a lens into
halves, and placing each half so as to represent an eye with a
distance of two and a half inches between them. Although it was this
use of lenses that made the stereoscope fashionable, Professor
Wheatstone continued to recommend his original reflecting
instrument as the most efficient form, not only for investigating the
phenomena of binocular vision, but also for exhibiting the greatest
variety of stereoscopic effects, “as it admits of every required
adjustment, and pictures of any size may be placed in it.”
But in 1856 the chorus of unanimity as to the original invention of
the stereoscope was broken. Detraction then began. A book, which
was published in that year, not only disputed the scientific accuracy
of the principles of vision enunciated by Professor Wheatstone, but
endeavoured to divest him of all credit in connection with the
invention of the stereoscope. Who ever could have written such a
book? Sir David Brewster! Nor did a book suffice. In 1860 he read a
paper before the Photographic Society of Scotland “respecting the
invention of the stereoscope in the sixteenth century and of
binocular drawings by Jacopo da Empoli, a Florentine artist.” He
stated that inquiry into the history of the stereoscope showed that
its fundamental principle was known even to Euclid; that it was
distinctly described by Galen 1500 years ago; and that Baptista Porta
had, in 1599, given such a complete drawing of the two separate
pictures as seen by each eye, and of the combined picture placed
between them, that in it might be recognised not only the principle,
but the construction of the stereoscope.
It is noteworthy that Sir David Brewster first gave Professor
Wheatstone the credit of being the inventor of the telegraph, and
afterwards ridiculed his claims.
As to the principle of the stereoscope, it was at the meeting of
the British Association in 1848 that Sir David Brewster definitely
disputed the theory of vision which ascribes to experience instead of
intuition the correct perception of objects and of distances with two
eyes as well as with one. He observed that an infant obtained his
first glances of the external world by opening on it both eyes which
evidently conveyed single vision to the mind; and in like manner he
contended that young animals saw distances correctly almost at the
instant of their birth. The duckling ran to the water almost as soon
as it broke the shell; the young boa constrictor would involve and
bite an object presented to it; and on the other hand no person ever
saw a child use such motions as proved it to perceive objects at its
eye, to grasp at the sun or moon or other inaccessible objects, but
quite the contrary. Dr. Whewell entirely dissented from the views of
Sir David Brewster, which were not new; and in confirmation of Dr.
Whewell’s contention that experience was a necessary guide in the
use of the senses, a Bristol oculist gave several instances of persons
who on being restored to sight from total blindness could not at first
form any idea of the distances, or directions, or shapes of bodies; in
one instance the patient, for a length of time, was in the habit of
shutting her eyes entirely and feeling the objects, in order to get rid
of the confusion which vision gave rise to; and it was only as her
experience grew more perfect that she saw with increasing
correctness and pleasure, until at length her sight became perfect.
The controversy on this subject has engaged the attention of many
philosophers and has not yet been settled. In later years Helmholtz,
who preferred the mirror stereoscope of Wheatstone to the lenticular
one of Brewster on the ground that the former gave more sharply-
defined effects, stated that the hypotheses successively formed by
the various supporters of the intuitive theories of vision were quite
unnecessary, as no fact had been discovered inconsistent with the
empirical theory, which supposes nothing more than the well-known
association between the impressions we receive and the conclusions
we draw from them, according to the fundamental laws of daily
experience.
In 1851 Professor Wheatstone invented the pseudoscope, an
instrument which conveys to the mind false perceptions of all
external objects, called conversions of relief, because the illusive
appearance had the same relation to that of the real object as a cast
to a mould or a mould to a cast. Thus a china vase ornamented with
flowers in relief showed in the pseudoscope a vertical section of the
interior with painted hollow impressions of the flowers. In like
manner a bust became a deep hollow mask. When two objects at
different distances were viewed through it, the most remote object
appeared the nearest, while the nearest became the most remote. A
flowering shrub in front of a hedge appeared in the pseudoscope as
behind the hedge, and a tree standing outside a window was
transferred to the inside of the room.
This instrument has been useful in illustrating mental phenomena
according to the impressions it produces on observers. It is found
that with most persons the inverted appearance that an object
presents when seen through the instrument is alone seen at first;
but after the real form of the object becomes known, their visual
perception is so much under the control of their matter-of-fact
experience that they are unable again to see the inversion of the
object. With other observers the real appearance of the object lasts
a shorter or longer time, after which their visual impressions
predominate to such an extent that it again appears inverted.
Nor did his fertility in illustrating visual effects end here. Mr. J.
Plateau stated in the journal of the Belgian Royal Academy for 1851
that Professor Wheatstone had communicated to him a plan for
combining the principle of the stereoscope with that of the
Phenakisticope, whereby figures simply painted upon paper would
be seen both in relief and in motion, thus presenting all the
appearances of life.
In 1851 he supplied the scientific world with a mechanical
illustration of the earth’s rotatory motion which was much admired,
and which set at rest some disputed points. Questions had been
raised at that time as to the effect which the rotation of the earth
had upon bodies which, like the pendulum, oscillated from fixed
points; and M. Foucault designed mechanical means of showing such
effects which were said to make the rotation of the earth as evident
to the sight as that of a spinning-top. His original experiment was
shown in Paris to M. Arago and other scientific men, and was
described as follows:—To the centre of the dome of the Pantheon
(272 feet high) a fine wire was attached, from which a sphere of
metal, four or five inches in diameter, was suspended so as to hang
near the floor of the building. This apparatus was put in vibration
after the manner of a pendulum. Under, and concentrical with it, was
placed a circular table, some twenty feet in diameter, the
circumference of which was divided into degrees, minutes, &c., and
the divisions were numbered. The elementary principles of
mechanics showed that, supposing the earth to have the diurnal
motion upon its axis which explains the phenomena of day and
night, the plane in which the pendulum vibrated would not be
affected by this diurnal motion, but would maintain strictly the same
direction during twenty-four hours. In this interval, however, the
table over which the pendulum was suspended would continually
change its position in virtue of the diurnal motion, so as to make a
complete revolution in about 30h. 40m. Since, then, the table thus
revolved, and the pendulum which vibrated over it did not revolve, a
line traced upon the table by a point or pencil projecting from the
bottom of the ball would change its direction relatively to the table
from minute to minute, and from hour to hour; so that when paper
was spread upon the table, the pencil formed a system of lines
radiating from the centre of the table; and the two lines thus drawn
after the interval of one hour always formed an angle with each
other of about eleven and a half degrees, being the twenty-fourth
part of the circumference. This was actually shown to crowds who
daily flocked to the Pantheon to witness this remarkable experiment.
The practised eye of a correct observer, aided by a magnifying glass,
could actually see the motion which the table had in common with
the earth under the pendulum between two successive vibrations, it
being apparent that the ball did not return precisely to the same
point of the circumference of the table after two successive
vibrations.
This experiment was repeated in other towns both on the
Continent and in England with accordant results. It was pointed out,
however, that the influence of the earth’s magnetism and other
sources of error might produce discrepancies; but Professor
Wheatstone invented an apparatus which presented a complete
illustration not only of the general principle, but of the precise law of
the sine of the latitude. He maintained the principle that so long as
the axis of vibration continues parallel to itself, the arc of vibration
will continue parallel to itself; but if the axis does not continue
parallel, the direction of the arc of vibration will deviate. His
apparatus illustrated that principle. Instead of a pendulum he used
the vibrations of a coiling spring, the axis of which could be placed in
any required inclination or latitude with respect to a vertical
semicircular frame which revolved about its vertical axis: the
direction of the vibration was seen to change in a degree
proportioned to the sine of the latitude or inclination. He remarked,
with reference to Foucault’s experiment, that the difficulty of the
mechanical investigation of the subject, and the delicacy of an
experiment liable to so many causes of error, had led many persons
to doubt either the reality of the phenomena or the satisfactoriness
of the explanation; and he therefore supplied an experimental proof
which was not dependent upon the rotation of the earth. His
experimental proof was pronounced the most complete and
satisfactory that had been given.
Another subject that attracted his attention for years was the art
of writing in cipher. When he was before a Parliamentary Committee
in 1840 he was asked whether the telegraph was not open to the
objection that the officials working it necessarily became acquainted
with the contents of all the messages. His only reply to that
objection then was that secret messages could be sent in cipher. In
later years he constructed a machine for that purpose, intending to
complete the benefits of the electric telegraph by rendering it
possible to transmit telegraphic messages in a way that would
render their contents unintelligible to the officials through whose
hands they passed. This machine was called the cryptograph, and it
periodically changed the characters representing the successive
letters of the written communication, so that it could not be read
except by the receiver, who, possessing a corresponding machine set