Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Highton, Henry
HIGHTON, HENRY (1816–1874), scientific writer, born at Leicester in 1816, was eldest son of Henry Highton of that town. He spent five years at Rugby School, under Dr. Arnold, and matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford, 13 March 1834. After leaving school, he continued on intimate terms with Dr. Arnold. A letter (5 April 1837) from Arnold to him on the religious duty of cultivating the intellect is printed in Stanley's ‘Life of Arnold.’ Highton proceeded B.A. in 1837 (M.A. in 1840), obtaining a first-class in classics, and was Michel fellow of his college in 1840–1. He was assistant-master at Rugby School from 1841 to 1859, and principal of Cheltenham College from the latter date till 1862. On 23 Dec. 1874 he died at The Cedars, Putney, where he had resided for several years.
In 1842 Highton offered some advice as to the recovery of the Israelitish ‘nationality lost for 1800 years’ in a printed letter addressed to Sir Moses Montefiore. In 1849 he published some sermons; in 1851 a ‘Catechism of the Second Advent;’ and in 1862 a revised translation of the New Testament. In 1863 appeared his ‘Letter to the Lord Bishop of London on the Repeal of the Act of Uniformity and the True Principles of Church Reform,’ criticising the Athanasian Creed—a ‘sore of long standing’—the burial service, ‘fabulous holidays,’ &c. Highton's last theological work was ‘Dean Stanley and Saint Socrates, the Ethics of the Philosopher and the Philosophy of the Divine,’ 1873. It was an attack on Stanley when chosen select preacher to the university of Oxford for his ‘consistent opposition to evangelical truth.’ In 1873 Highton published a translation of some of Victor Hugo's poems.
Meanwhile Highton had paid some attention to practical physics, especially to the application of electricity to telegraphy. On 1 May 1872 he read before the Society of Arts a paper on ‘Telegraphy without Insulation,’ as a cheap means of international communication, in which he refers to a systematic series of experiments with different lengths of wire dropped in the Thames, and with a gold-leaf instrument which had ‘twenty-six years previously been adapted [by him] for telegraphic purposes.’ The paper was accompanied by several experiments illustrating the entire field of electrical physics. The society conferred on Highton their silver medal for the paper. He afterwards read another on galvanic batteries; and various letters of his are printed in the society's journal on Atlantic telegraphy, the science of energy, &c. He also invented and patented an artificial stone which came into considerable use for paving and building purposes.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Rugby School Register; Times, 24 Dec. 1874; Journal Soc. Arts, xx. 506, 657, 861, &c., xxi. 59, 62, 843, &c.]