Sir Charles Wheatstone & Traveling Sound
Posted: Wednesday, August 25, 2010
by Nick DAlleva
Specialty Answering Service
The concept of the telephone deals with sound being converted to electronic impulses and traveling along electrical current until they reach their destination where they are converted back into audible sound. No modern day technological telephony equipment from home phones to telephone answering services would be possible without the help of Sir Charles Wheatstone. Born on February 6, 1802, he grew up to be one of the major scientific and musical inventors of the Victorian era. He is known for his contributions to acoustics and electric telegraphy. Through his inventions of the aconcryptophone and stereoscope, Wheatstone became a major player in developing how sound would travel and be heard, eventually leading to the invention of the modern day telephone, a device that is the basis for modern day call center and telephone answering services.
With his love of music spawning from his father, Wheatstone created the Aconcryptophone. It consisted of a combination of the piano, harp, and dulcimer together, hung from the ceiling by a cord. The instrument worked my waves moving in high velocity, transmitting sounds to long distances. Said to have sound travel at 200 micrographia, Wheatstone wrote, "I can assure the reader that I have, by the help of a distended wire, propagated the sound to a very considerable distance in an instant, or with as seemingly quick motion as that of light." Not only was this the first of its kind in the Victorian era, but could also work with bent wires, the arrangement is called a 'telephone'' Not only did he invent a way to travel sounds from long distance, but he also invented the 'microphone,' to hear the sounds delivered by the telephone. The microphone consisted of two rods that work by conveying mechanical vibrations to the ears.
As an English scientist and inventor, Wheatstone also invented the stereoscope, used to display three-dimensional images. The stereoscope was found through the exploitation of spectral emission lines. Wheatstone used a method of looking at an electric spark through a prism to reveal certain rays which were characteristic of them. The metals that formed the sparking points could be found by analyzing the light of the spark. The stereoscope was an arrangement of lenses and prisms and it used two photographs of the same object taken from different points and made them seam as a single solid object to the human eye. With this invention and his explanation of binocular vision, Wheatstone was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. He showed that the mind can comprehend more than just two dimensional pictures, but of two separate pictures of an object taken by both eyes from different points of view, thus creating a three dimensional image.
Wheatstone used his inventions of the telephone, microphone, and stereoscope, to aid in the installation of wires for the telegraph. He proposed to lay lines across the Thames and on the London and Birmingham Railway. Following his completion of the automatic telegraph in 1868, Wheatstone was knighted. With more than thirty-four distinctions and diplomas to his name, he became a much respected man in society. Telephones and the entire telephone answering service industry would not exist if it were not for the work of Sir Charles Wheatstone.
Specialty Answering Service is a nationwide live answering service and order taking answering service provider. We answer for each client 24 hours a day and follow their instructions to handle each inbound or outbound communication perfectly.
This Article has been viewed 158 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.