Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Who Invented What?

Wheatstone is most famous for the invention of the Wheatstone bridge, a device for measuring electrical resistance in materials. He actually didn’t invent it. Samuel Hunter Christie (1784-1865) did. But Wheatstone explained it, more clearly, in a paper written for his fellows of the Royal Society. He should perhaps be better known for his invention of the telegraph. He did, that. It is Samuel Morse (1791-1872), however, who usually gets the credit. Morse built a better telegraph and people beat a path to his door, particularly after he sent, over a distance of 30 miles between Baltimore and Washington, the headline inducing biblical message, “What hath God wrought.”

Wheatstone should be most famous for inventing the stereoscope. By placing two cameras close together at about the distance of two eyes are apart, he took two pictures of the same scene. He then placed the pictures side-by-side in the back of a box with two eyepieces in the front. Each eyepiece was focused on just one picture and when someone looked through the box he perceived depth and three-dimensionality that was not otherwise quite so apparent in the photographs. It was an illusion. Wheatstone had figured out how to fool our senses. But he had also demonstrated the importance of stereopsis.