WHEATSTONE, SIR CHARLES, celebrated physicist and electrician, born near Gloucester; was a man of much native ingenuity, and gave early proof of it; was appointed professor of Experimental Philosophy in King's College, London, and distinguished himself by his inventions in connection with telegraphy; the stereoscope was of his invention (1802-1875).

The question why the sky and the deep ocean are both blue did not much concern the earlier physicists.

The adoption of the undulatory theory of light called for the extension of the same theory to heat, electricity, and magnetism, and this promptly suggested the hypothesis of a correlation, material connection, and transmutability of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc.; which hypothesis the physicists held in absolute suspense until very lately, but are now generally adopting.

Successive improvements made in the Montgolfiers' original invention permitted bold physicists ere long to risk themselves in a vessel attached to the air-machine.