Pavel Lvovitch Schilling | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Pavel Lvovitch Schilling. Portrait by Karl Bryullov, 1828 | |
| Born | April 5 [16], 1786 |
| Died | July 25 [August 6], 1837 |
| Occupation(s) | Inventor, military officer, diplomat |
Baron Pavel Lvovitch Schilling (1786–1837), also known asPaul Schilling, was aRussian inventor, military officer anddiplomat ofBaltic German origin. The majority of his career was spent working for the imperial RussianMinistry of Foreign Affairs as a language officer at the Russian embassy inMunich. As a military officer, he took part in theWar of the Sixth Coalition againstNapoleon. In his later career, he was transferred to the Asian department of the ministry and undertook a tour ofMongolia to collect ancient manuscripts.
Schilling is best known for his pioneering work inelectrical telegraphy, which he undertook at his own initiative. While in Munich, he worked withSamuel Thomas von Sömmerring who was developing anelectrochemical telegraph. Schilling developed the firstelectromagnetic telegraph that was of practical use.Schilling's design was aneedle telegraph using magnetised needles suspended by a thread over acurrent-carrying coil. His design also greatly reduced the number of wires compared to Sömmerring's system by the use ofbinary coding.Tsar Nicholas I planned to install Schilling's telegraph on a link toKronstadt, but cancelled the project after Schilling died.
Other technological interests of Schilling includedlithography and remote detonation of explosives. For the latter, he invented a submarine cable, which he later also applied to telegraphy. Work on telegraphy in Russia, and other electrical applications, was continued after Schilling's death byMoritz von Jacobi, his assistant and successor as head of theSt. Petersburg electrical engineering workshop.
Baron Pavel Lvovitch Schilling von Cannstadt was born in Reval (nowTallinn),Estonia, on 16 April 1786 (N.S.). He was an ethnic German ofSwabian andBaltic descent.[1] Soon after the birth of Pavel, their first child,[2] Ludwig von Schilling was promoted to the commander of the 23rd Nizovsky infantry regiment, and the family relocated toKazan where the regiment was based.[1] Pavel spent his childhood years in Kazan; early exposure to diverse Asiatic cultures explains his lasting interest in the Orient.[3] He was expected to follow a military career like his father, so at the age of nine he was formally enrolled at the Nizovsky regiment, and two years later, after his father's death, he was sent to theFirst Cadet Corps.[4] By this time,tsar Paul's haphazard management had reduced military education to mereexhibition drill; Schilling's proper training commenced only after graduation, in 1802.[4] He was commissioned as apodporuchik, posted to theQuartermaster general's office commanded byTheodor von Schubert and assigned cartographical surveying duties.[5][4]
Family circumstances obliged Schilling to resign his commission in 1803. He then joined theforeign service as a language officer,[6] and dispatched to the Russian legation inMunich, where his stepfatherKarl von Bühler was the minister.[1] After Bühler's retirement, Schilling served as anattaché to the legation inMunich from 1809 to 1811.[7][1] He first became interested in electrical science while he was in Munich through contact withSamuel Thomas von Sömmerring who was developing anelectrical telegraph.[7] Since his duties as a diplomat were light, he spent much time with Sömmerring,[8] and brought many Russian dignitaries to see Sömmerring's apparatus.[9]
When war threatened between France and Russia, Schilling put his mind to applying his electrical knowledge to military purposes. In July 1812 he, along with all Russian diplomats in Germany, was recalled toSaint Petersburg in anticipation of the impendingFrench invasion of Russia.[7][10] He brought with him a complete set of Sömmerring's telegraph, and demonstrated it to military engineers and tsar Alexander.[11] He continued work on remote mine detonation. However, none of his inventions were ready for field service, and Schilling requested transfer to a military position in the fighting Army.[12]
Placing him into the military structure was not easy. Schilling did not have any combat experience. As a retired Army officer, he was merely a second lieutenant (podporuchik); as a civil servant, he has reached a rank equivalent to Armymajor.[12] The situation was not uncommon for the volunteers of 1812, yet it had puzzled military authorities and Schilling's application was rejected.[12] In May 1813 he appealed directly to Alexander I, who authorised placing Schilling tohorse artillery reserves;[13] on 6 September [O.S. 25 August] 1813 he was posted to commanderAlexander Seslavin's Sumy hussars with the rank ofShtabs-rotmistr (i.e. Captain Lieutenant)[13][6][note 1] Schilling arrived at the regiment shortly after theBattle of Dresden. He was initially employed as a liaison withSaxon authorities, and had not seen real combat until December 1813, when Russian troops advanced into French territory.[13][14] He received his first combat award for theBattle of Bar-sur-Aube of 27 February 1814; his actions during theBattle of Arcis-sur-Aube and theBattle of Fère-Champenoise were rewarded with theGolden Weapon for Bravery.[14][15][6]
After thefall of Paris Schilling requested transfer from the Army back to civil service, and in October of the same year he returned to Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg.[16] Russian foreign policy of the immediate post-war period concentrated on eastward expansion, thus Schilling was placed with the growing Asiatic Department.[16][6] He continued to take an interest in electricity andlithography, a new method of printing which he wished to introduce into Russia.[17] His presentation of the latest German lithographic printing technology aroused interest in the Ministry, and very soon he was dispatched back toBavaria, with instructions to secure supplies oflithographic stone from theSolnhofen quarries.[16] In July 1815 he arrived in Munich to meet withAlois Senefelder, the inventor of the lithographic process,[18] who assisted Schilling with his errand; in December Schilling briefly visited Bavaria again, to take delivery of finished stones.[16] During 1815 he met many French and German orientalists and physicists, particularlyAndré-Marie Ampère,François Arago andJohann Schweigger.[16]
On his return to Saint Petersburg, Schilling was appointed head of the Ministry's lithographic print shop,[19] which was established in the spring of 1816.[16][20] Curiously, the first document printed there was anerotic poem byVasily Pushkin, the only Russian verse that Schilling could recite by heart.[21] Setting up the print shop was rewarded with theOrder of Saint Anna.[22] Apart from disseminating reports, maps and instructions within the foreign service, Schilling's shop also produced daily summaries of intercepted letters and other covertsurveillance.[23] These were delivered to foreign ministerKarl Nesselrode, and then, at the minister's discretion, to the tsar.[23] Not later than 1818 Schilling began experiments withManchu andMongolian typography; from 1820 he assisted father Peter Kamensky in preparation of theChinese-Mongolian-Manchu-Russian-Latin dictionary.[24] His Chinese editions had exemplary quality for the time, on a par with thePeking Palace originals.[24]
Schilling retained control of the print shop until the end of his life, however, this was only one of his side activities.[25] His main responsibilities at the foreign service were development, distribution and safeguarding ofciphers for Russian embassies and overseas agents.[25] After the 1823 service reform Schilling was appointed head of the 2nd Secret Branch,[23] and held this post until his death.[25] The secretive nature of this work remained classified throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and escaped notice by contemporaries and biographers.[25][note 2] Friends and correspondents knew that he was a middle-level servant in the foreign service, but nothing more.[25] Schilling was not engaged in diplomacy, but was perceived as a diplomat; the deception was supported by the facts that he often travelled abroad and met foreign dignitaries without apparent restrictions.[25] Secrecy was compensated with generous payouts, for example in 1830 Nicholas I authorised abonus payment of 1000 goldenducats;[note 3] Schilling's subordinates received lesser, but still substantial rewards.[26]
Work at the Cipher Branch left plenty of time for unrelated research, from studyingTibetan scriptures to developing electrical telegraph, which became Schilling's best known work. Schilling set up an electrical engineering workshop in thePeter and Paul Fortress, and recruitedMoritz von Jacobi fromDorpat University to act as his assistant there.[27] In 1828 Schilling was made aState Councillor and became a corresponding member of theInstitute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[28] In May 1830, he was sent on a two-year reconnaissance mission to the Russo-Chinese frontier. He returned to St. Petersburg in March 1832,[28] bringing with him a valuable collection of documents inChinese,Tibetan,Mongolian and other languages. These were deposited in theImperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.[29] Some of these documents were obtained in exchange for a demonstration of the small telegraph apparatus Schilling had carried with him.[30] Back in St. Petersburg, Schilling returned to developing a telegraph. There were plans to put it into service, but Schilling died before these could be completed.[7]
Schilling's state of health deteriorated through the 1830s. He wasmorbidly obese,[31][32] and by 1835 suffered pains of unknown nature.[32] He requested permission to travel to Europe for medical help, and with the help of Nesselrode secured the tsar's written consent that was actually an order for anindustrial espionage mission, in areas from telegraphy tocharcoal kilns.[33] In September 1835 Schilling attended a conference inBonn, as instructed by Nicholas I, and delivered his telegraph set toGeorg Wilhelm Muncke.[34] Upon return to Saint Petersburg, he conducted further experiments in telegraphy. In 1836 he briefly appeared atAndreas von Ettingshausen's laboratory inVienna, researching new insulation materials.[35] In May 1837 Schilling received instructions to draw a budget for a telegraph line connectingPeterhof withKronstadt, and to begin preliminary field work.[36] By this time he experienced regular pain caused by atumour.[36] Doctor Nicholas Arendt, his childhood friend from Kazan years, now Life Medic to the tsar, performed asurgery that did not help.[36] Schilling died a few months later, and was buried with honours at theSmolenskoye Lutheran Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.[36] All records, models and equipment left by Schilling passed toMoritz von Jacobi, who would build the first operational telegraph line in Russia, connecting the Winter Palace with the Army Headquarters, in 1841.[36]
Schilling's main contribution to cryptography was hisbigramcipher, adopted for government use in 1823.[37][38] The Schilling ciphers combined features ofsubstitution ciphers and multiple-choicepolyalphabetic ciphers usingbigrams as source input.[38] Each bigram consisted of two letters of sourceplaintext (inFrench language, thelingua franca of diplomacy), separated with a predetermined number of characters. The bigram was then converted to a number using permanent codetables containing 992 (32x31) pairs of alternative numbers.[37][38] The method also involvedpadding source plaintext with random garbage and occasional encoding of single characters instead of bigrams.[38]
The first three sets of codetables prepared by Schilling were issued to viceroy ofPolandGrand Duke Konstantin, special envoy toPersia princeAlexander Menshikov, and to foreign ministerKarl Nesselrode on his journey to theUnited States.[38][37] The method was used by Russian diplomats until the 1900s.[38] Individual ciphers were rated safe for up to six years of service, later downrated to three years;[38] in reality, some codetables remained in use for up to twenty years, violating all security protocols.[39]
In the 1820s Schilling's scholarly papers on oriental languages brought him degrees and membership in British, French and Russian learned societies.[40] He was a long-time friend to the chief of the Russian Orthodox mission in Peking, and leading Russian orientalistNikita Bichurin (father Hyacinth).[41] After Bichurin was disgracefully demoted and exiled, Schilling advocated for his pardon, and in 1826 he secured the transfer of Bichurin from imprisonment atValaam Monastery to a desk job at the Foreign Ministry in Saint Petersburg.[41][42] Schilling assistedAlexander von Humboldt during the initial stages of the1829 expedition to Russia.[43] After Humboldt had declined an offer to lead another expedition into theRussian Far East, the role was awarded to Schilling.[43] Preparations began immediately after signing of theTreaty of Adrianople in September 1829.[44] Core staff of the expedition included Schilling himself, Bichurin andVladimir Solomirsky, bastard son ofDmitry Tatishchev.[45]Alexander Pushkin, well acquainted to all three, wanted to join, but Nicholas I ordered him to stay in Russia.[42][45][note 4]
Schilling's main, covert mission was to evaluate the spread of Buddhism among local tribes, to outline the course of action to contain it, and to compile a binding statute that would regulate all aspects of Buddhist religious practice.[46] The imperial government did not tolerate any independent ideologies and settled on subjugating the Buddhist leaders to the state.[46] Meanwhile, the number of Buddhist monks was increasing at pace, almost doubling over a decade.[47][note 5] Outright repressions were ruled out, for fears of mass emigration of nomads, and of potential conflict with China.[48] The government was also concerned with the decline ofborder trade at theKyakhta checkpoint and the increase insmuggling; Schilling was tasked with identifying the routes and the markets used by smugglers and to evaluate the volume of illegal trade.[49] Officially, the mission was limited to "studies of population and international trade on the Russo-Chinese frontier"; any research apart from these tasks had to be paid by Schilling personally.[50] To raise money, Schilling sold his scientific library to the Ministry of Education.[51]
In May 1830[52] Schilling began the journey from Saint Petersburg toKyakhta, a frontier market town that became his base for the next 18 months.[53] His travels out of Kyakhta to various Buddhist shrines and border stations amounted, in total, to 7208versts (7690 kilometres).[54] Schilling himself wrote that the purpose of these travels was primarilyethnographic research. According to Bichurin, Schilling spent most of his time with Tibetan and Mongolianlamas, studying ancient Buddhist scriptures; he was concerned more with linguistics and history of Far Eastern peoples, rather than ethnography.[55] His main quest was the search for theKangyur - a Tibetanreligious text closely guarded by thelamas and known to Europeans only in fragments.[56][note 6] At the beginning, Schilling tried to obtain the complete Kangyur from China. He could not imagine that poor nomadicBuryats andMongols could create, own and safeguard whole libraries of sacred literature.[57] However, he soon found out that the Buryats of the Russian Empire owned three copies of three different editions of the Kangyur; one of the three was preserved inChikoy, less than twenty miles east from Kyakhta.[58] Schilling earned the respect of the lamas for being the only Russian who could read Tibetan texts, and easily obtained permission to read and copy them.[59] According to Leonid Chuguevsky,[note 7] it is likely that the lamas were aware of Schilling's mission and his liberal view towards state control over religion, and in their own way tried to appease the friendly but dangerous visitor.[60]
The Chikoy Kangyur could only be copied, but Schilling managed to acquire parts of a different copy from the chief of the Tsongol tribe. Later theKhambo Lama of the Buryats sent Schilling a collection of medical andastrological treatises.[61] Schilling became a celebrity among the Buryats: some lamas preached that he was the prophet that would convert the Europeans, others believed that he was thereincarnatedKhubilgan.[62] His house in Kyakhta became the object of masspilgrimage that brought more and more manuscripts.[62] Schilling realised that, apart from the complete Kangyur, his collection missed only a few essential texts of theTibetan Buddhist canon. He filled the gaps by hiring more than twentycalligraphists who copied the missing books.[63]Józef Kowalewski, who witnessed the process, wrote that "the Baron", although an amateur, "influenced the Buriats immensely ... There appeared experts inthe Tibetan and even in Sanskrit languages, painters, engravers; the monks began to inquire more deeply into the foundations of their faith and to read books; there were discovered many books which had been before claimed as being non-extant".[64]
Finally, in March 1831 Schilling obtained the Kangyur and the 224-volumeTengyur at a remotedatsan on theOnon River.[65] Local lamas struggled to print 100 million copies[note 8] ofOm mani padme hum that they once vowed to contribute to a new shrine, and Schilling came to the rescue promising to print the whole lot, in tiny lithographedTibetan script, in Saint Petersburg.[66][67] He fulfilled the promise, and was rewarded with the precious books.[67] ThisDerge edition of the Kangyur, which Schilling mistook for the older, classicNarthang version, was the first Kangyur owned by a European.[68][note 9] Once the collection was complete, Schilling began cataloguing and indexing; hisIndex of theNarthang Kangyur, printed posthumously and anonymously in 1845, contains 3800 pages in four volumes.[69]
Schilling returned to Moscow in March 1832,[70] and one month later[44] arrived in Saint Petersburg with reports and drafts of statutes on cross-border trade and on Buddhist clergy.[71] He recommended keeping thestatus quo on both issues, while keeping an eye on similar problems of theBritish administrators in Canton.[72] The government decided not to press the issue of religion; a statute regulating the Buddhists was enacted only in 1853.[73] Having fulfilled the mission, Schilling concentrated on telegraphy and cryptography.[69] His work on the Kangyur was completed by an educated lay Buryat man brought from Siberia specifically for this purpose.[69]
Schilling first became involved intelegraphy while he was in Munich. He assisted Sömmerring with his experiments with anelectrochemical telegraph. This form of telegraph uses electricity to cause a chemical reaction at the far end, such as bubbles forming in a glass tube of acid. After returning to St. Petersburg he conducted his own experiments with this type of telegraph. He demonstrated this toTsar Alexander I in 1812, but Alexander declined to take it up.[7] His successor Nicholas I (ascended 1825), wary about the spread of "subversive" ideas, was particularly opposed to introducing any mass communications.[75] He agreed with the use of electrical telegraphy for selected military and civil offices, but prohibited public discussion of telegraph technology, including even reports on foreign inventions.[75] Schilling could demonstrate his experiments to the public with no ill consequences, but he never tried to publish his research in print. After the death of Schilling, in 1841, Moritz von Jacobi tried to do it, and the journal containing his review article was confiscated and destroyed by a special order of the tsar.[75] When Schilling learned ofHans Christian Ørsted's discovery in 1820 that electric current could deflect compass needles, he decided to switch investigation intoneedle telegraphs, that is, telegraphs that used Ørsted's principle.[7] Schilling used from one to six needles in various demonstrations to represent letters of the alphabet or other information.[76]
The first Schilling telegraph was completed in 1828.[77] The demonstration set consisted of a double-wire copper line and two terminals, each having avoltaic pile providing current of around 200 mA,[74] a Schweigger multiplier for indication, a send-receive switch and a bidirectionaltelegraph key.[78] There were no intermediaterepeaters yet, limiting the potential range of the system.[78] The switches and the keys used open vials filled withmercury.[79] Likewise, the shaft of the multiplier pointer washydraulically dampened by suspending its paddle in a pool of mercury.[80] The coil of each multiplier contained 1760 turns of copper wire insulated withsilk.[74] Two magnetized steel pegs ensured that in absence of current the pointer always returned to its off-state, and provided some additional dampening.[74]
The 40-character code table used variable-length coding, from one to five bits per character.[81] Unlike the dot-dash bits of theMorse code, the bits of Schilling telegraph were encoded by currentdirection, and marked as either "left" or "right" in the codetable.[81] The economic value of variable-length coding was not obvious yet; relying on operator's memory or scratchpads to record incoming bits was deemed too unreliable. Thus, fellow researchers compelled Schilling to design an alternative multi-wire, parallel-send system.[81] Von Sömmerring used eight bits; Schilling reduced the number of bits to six (again, for a 40-character alphabet).[81]
Schilling took a single-needle instrument with him for demonstration purposes on his journey to the Far East.[82] When he returned, Schilling used a binary code on his telegraph with multiple needles, inspired by thehexagrams fromI Ching which he had become familiar with in the East. These hexagrams are figures used indivination, each of which consist of a figure of six stacked lines. Each line can be solid or broken, two binary states, leading to a total of 64 figures. The six units of theI Ching fitted in perfectly with the six needles he needed to code the Russian alphabet.[28] This was the first use of binary coding intelecommunications, predating theBaudot code by several decades.[83]
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On 21 October 1832 (O.S.), Schilling set up a demonstration of his six-needle telegraph between two rooms in his apartment building atMarsovo Pole, about 100 metres apart.[note 10] To get the space to demonstrate a credible distance, he hired the entire floor of the building and ran a mile and a half of wire around the building. The demonstration was so popular that it stayed open until the Christmas break. Notable visitors included Nicholas I (who had already seen an earlier version in April 1830),[84]Moritz von Jacobi,Alexander von Benckendorff, andGrand Duke Michael Pavlovich. A ten-word message in French was dictated by the Tsar and successfully sent over the apparatus.[85][note 11]Alexander von Humboldt, after seeing Schilling's telegraph demonstrated in Berlin, recommended to the Tsar that a telegraph should be built in Russia.[86]
In May 1835, Schilling began a tour of Europe demonstrating a one-needle instrument. He conducted experiments in Vienna with other scientists, including an investigation into the relative merits of rooftop and buried cables. The buried cable was not successful because his thin India rubber and varnish insulation was inadequate. In September he was at a meeting inBonn whereGeorg Wilhelm Muncke saw the instrument. Muncke had a copy made for use in his lectures.[87] In 1835, Schilling demonstrated a five-needle telegraph to theGerman Physical Society in Frankfurt. By the time Schilling returned to Russia, his telegraph was well known throughout Europe and was frequently discussed in the scientific literature. In September 1836, the British government offered to buy the rights to the telegraph but Schilling declined, wishing to use it to pursue telegraphy in Russia.[88]
In 1836, Nicholas I created a commission of inquiry to advise on installation of Schilling's telegraph betweenKronstadt, an important naval base, andPeterhof Palace.[7]Prince Alexander Menshikov, the Minister of Marine,[27] was appointed president of the commission.[90] An experimental line was set up in theAdmiralty building, connecting Menshikov's study with his subordinates' offices. The five-kilometre line was partly overground and partly submerged in the canals, with three interemediateSchweigger multipliers.[91] Menshikov submitted a favourable report and secured the tsar's approval to connectPeterhof with the naval base atKronstadt, across theGulf of Finland.[92][35]
The 1836 telegraph proposed by Schilling was very similar to the 1828 experimental set, with minor improvements made during the Far Eastern expedition.[93] It consisted ofvoltaic piles, wires, multipliers coupled torepeater switches, andalarm bells.[94] Thin copper wires were insulated with silk-reinforcedlatex and suspended to load-bearinghemp cables.[95] Each multiplier contained several hundred turns of silver of copper wire on abrass spool.[95] The shaft of its pointer was dampened by immersion in mercury.[95] Signal currents were by design bidirectional ("left" or "right" in Schilling's code tables).[95] Later, Schilling's telegraph was often described as a multi-wire device for sending five or six bits in parallel, however, his 1836 proposal clearly describes a double-wire, serial device.[96]
Schilling knew that all means of insulating submerged cables were inferior to bare overhead wires, and intended to keep the length of submerged cable as short as possible.[89] He proposed laying a 7.5 kilometre submerged cable from Kronstadt toOranienbaum, the nearest coastal town, and an 8 kilometre surface overhead line along the coast from Oranienbaum to Peterhof.[89] The Committee chaired by Menshikov ridiculed the idea. There were many objections, most important being the breach of security: the coastal line would be visible to any boat passing through the Gulf.[89] Menshikov pressed for the alternative route, a fully submerged 13-kilometre cable directly to Peterhof.[89]
On 19 May [O.S. 31 May] 1837 Menshikov notified Schilling that the tsar had approved a fully submerged construction.[89] Schilling took the project as far as ordering the submarine cable from a rope factory in St. Petersburg,[97] but he died on 6 August (N.S.),[98][note 12] and the project was subsequently cancelled.[7]
Schilling is sometimes credited with being the first to devise a code for a single-wire telegraph, but there is some doubt about how many needles he used and at what dates.[99] It may be that Schilling used a single-needle-only setup on demonstrations around Europe merely for ease of transport, or it may have been a later design inspired by theGauss and Weber telegraph, in which case he would not have been the first.[100] The code alleged to have been used with this telegraph can be traced toAlfred Vail,[101] but the variable-length code (likeMorse code) given by Vail is merely shown as an example of how it could be used.[102] In any case, two-element signalling alphabets predate any form of electrical telegraphy by some time.[101] According to Hubbard, it is more likely that Schilling used the same code as used on the six-needle telegraph, but with the bitssent serially instead ofin parallel.[103]
Schilling looked into the possibility of automatic recording of telegraph signals, but could not make it work due to the complexity of the device. His electrical engineering successor, Jacobi, succeeded in doing this in 1841 on a telegraph line from theWinter Palace to theGeneral Staff Headquarters.[27]
Another field of Schilling's research, directly related to telegraphy, was practical military applications of electricity for remote control ofland andnaval mines. In 1811Johann Schweigger suggested the idea of exploding bubbles ofhydrogen released from theelectrolyte by passing electric current.[104] Schilling discussed the idea with Sommering, and realised the military prospects for the invention.[105] He devised a water resistant conducting wire that could be laid in wet earth or through rivers. It consisted of a copper wire insulated with a mixture of India-rubber and varnish. Schilling had in mind the military use of telegraphy in the field as well,[106] and was excited about the prospects. Sömmerring wrote in his diary "Schilling is quite childish about his electro-conducting cord."[107]
In September 1812 Schilling demonstrated his first remote-controlled navalfuse toAlexander I on theNeva River in Saint Petersburg.[12] The invention was intended forcoastal defense andsieges, and was deemed unsuitable for the fast-pacedmaneuver warfare of the1812 campaign.[12] The Schilling fuse, patented in 1813, contained two pointedcarbon electrodes that produced anelectric arc. The electrode assembly was placed in a sealed box filled with fine-grainedgunpowder, which was ignited by the arc.[108]
In 1822 Schilling demonstrated the land version of his fuse to Alexander I atKrasnoye Selo; in 1827 another Schilling mine was shown to Nicholas I.[109] This time the test was supervised bymilitary engineerKarl Schilder, an influentialImperial Guard officer and an inventor in his own right.[109] Schilder pushed the proposal through the bureaucracy, and in April 1828 theInspector general of military engineers authorised development of electrically-fired mines for series production.[110] Russia had just entered thewar with the Ottoman Empire, which frequently involved sieges of Turkish defenses in theCaucasus.[110] The main problem that Schilling faced was the lack ofbatteries fit for field service, an issue not resolved until after the end of hostilities.[111] According to Russian biographers of both Schilling and Schilder, reports of electrically-fired mines being used during thesiege of Silistra are almost certainly incorrect.[111]
Immediately after his return from Siberia, Schilling resumed work on mines and fuses. In September 1832 a series of electrically-fired land mines, imitating both defensive and offensive operations, were successfully tested by Schilder's battalion.[44] This time the technology was ready for deployment and was issued to the Army; Schilling was awarded the Order of Saint Vladimir, 2nd class.[112] Schilling continued improving land mines until the end of his life.[112] In March 1834 Schilder test-fired the first naval mine employing insulated wires invented by Schilling; in 1835 the military performed the first testdemolition of a bridge with an electrically-fired underwater charge.[113] These demolition sets were produced and issued to military engineers' units from 1836 onwards.[114] On the other hand, theRussian Navy resisted the novelty until the invention of a reliablecontact fuse byMoritz von Jacobi in 1840.[115]
Schilling maintained regular correspondence with many scientists, writers and politicians, and was well known to Western European academic communities. He arranged publications of historical manuscripts and provided orientalsorts andmatrices to European print shops; however, during his lifetime he never attempted to publish a book in his own name or to submit an article to a journal.[69] The only known publication, the preface to theIndex of the Narthang Kangyur, was printed posthumously and anonymously.[117][69] His studies of oriental languages and Buddhist texts were soon forgotten.[69] The real author of theIndex was "rediscovered" in 1847, and then forgotten again.[69] Schilling's research into telegraphy is much better known; the physicists and engineers who wrote about Schilling were concerned primarily with his telegraph, and thus shaped the public image of Schilling as an engineer.[69] Later, various authors wrote about Schilling's oriental studies and travels, his collaborations with European academics and Russian poets, but none managed to grasp all the facets of his personality.[118] Schilling the linguist, Schilling the engineer and Schilling the socialite apparently acted as three different persons.[118]Moritz von Jacobi was probably the only contemporary who directly linked Schilling's achievements in telecommunications to his underlying proficiency in linguistics.[119]
The Schilling needle telegraph was never used as such, but it is partly the ancestor of theCooke and Wheatstone telegraph, a system widely used in the United Kingdom and British Empire in the nineteenth century. Some of the instruments of that system remained in use well into the twentieth century.[120] Schilling's demonstration in Frankfurt was attended byGeorg Wilhelm Muncke who subsequently had an exact copy of Schilling's apparatus made. Muncke used this for demonstrations in lectures. One of these lectures was attended byWilliam Fothergill Cooke, who was inspired to build a version of Schilling's telegraph of his own, although he did not realise that the instrument he saw was due to Schilling.[121] He abandoned this method for practical use in favour ofelectromagnetic clockwork solutions for a while, apparently believing that needle telegraphs always required multiple wires.[122] That Schilling's method of suspending the needle by a thread horizontally was not very convenient was also an influence. This changed when he partnered withCharles Wheatstone and the telegraph they then built together was a multiple-needle telegraph, but with a rather more robust mounting based on thegalvanometer ofMacedonio Melloni.[123] There is no evidence for the claim sometimes advanced that Wheatstone also lectured with a copy of Schilling's telegraph,[124] although he certainly knew about it and lectured on its implications.[125]
Schilling's original telegraph of 1832 is currently displayed in the telegraph collection of theA.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications.[28] The instrument was previously on exhibition at theParis Electrical Exhibition of 1881.[126] His contributions to electrical telegraphy were named anIEEE Milestone in 2009.[127] The Adamini Building at 7Marsovo Pole, St. Petersburg, where Schilling lived in the 1830s and where he died,[128] has a memorial plaque placed in 1886 to mark the centennial of his birth.[2]
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