Paul Ludwig Schilling from Cannstatt

Paul Ludwig Schilling

Paul Ludwig Schilling of Cannstatt (also Pavel Lvovich Schilling of Cannstatt (born 5 April), ^jul. / April 16, 1786 ^greg. In Tallinn , Governorate of Estonia ; † 6. August 1837 in Saint Petersburg ) was an Orientalist, printing pioneer and pioneer Telegraphy.

family

His father, Ludwig Joseph Ferdinand Schilling from the Talheimer Schilling von Cannstatt line, came from a Swabian manor and was a lieutenant in Russian military service. His sister married Christoph von Benkendorf in 1780. On July 6 ^jul. / July 17, 1785 ^greg. had married the father in Reval Catharina Charlotte von Schilling (* 25 November ^July / 6 December 1767 ^greg. in Reval), whose grandfather had come to Russia with Peter the Great.

The grandfather, Karl Friedrich, Baron Schilling von Canstatt (1697–1754) on Thalheim was Württemberg privy councilor, upper court marshal and upper bailiff of Heidenheim .

Paul Ludwig's younger biological siblings were Alexander, Johanna Wilhelmine Dorothea (∞ Count Banffy) and Theresia Wilhelmine Louise (∞ Prof. Joseph Ernst Hruby, from Starkenbach in Bohemia).

The father was a colonel, a Georgenkreuz knight and chief of the Nisow'schen Musketeer regiment when he was on February 3rd ^. / February 14, 1797 ^greg. died near Kazan . The mother then married Baron Karl Jakowlewitsch von Bühler (* 1749 in Stuttgart; † 1811) who had been in Russian service since 1774.

Life

soviet postage stamp

In line with family tradition, he first did military training and in 1795, at the age of nine, became an ensign in his father's regiment. After his death he was accepted into the first Cadetten Corps and came to the General Staff as a second lieutenant in September 1802.

Since the stepfather served as the Russian envoy at the Bavarian court in Munich from 1802 to 1805 , where his mother also lived, he became an interpreter at the College of Foreign Affairs (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) in 1802 and at the Russian embassy in Munich in May 1803, which his stepfather presided over , offset.

He lived in Munich in the Leyden's house on Maxthor (to the north-west). When he went to Samuel Thomas von Soemmerring for medical treatment in 1805 , they became friends. Soemmerring aroused his interest in electrical engineering. In 1809 Schilling drew attention to the electrical conductivity of the ground.

When the fifth coalition war between Austria and France broke out in April 1809 , and the former marched into Bavaria, Napoleon was able to quickly call for help via the Sémaphore telegraph from Claude Chappe , and Munich was liberated. Minister Maximilian Joseph von Montgelas then wanted a telegraph like this from the Academy in the summer. At the beginning of August 1810 Schilling observed Sömmering's experiments with telegraphs and on September 7th he was able to demonstrate Sömmering's own experiments with telegraphy.

January 1812 he became interested in Georg Friedrich von Reichenbach from the workshop with Joseph von Fraunhofer in the telegraph. In April / May 1812, he showed Sömmering his attempts to manufacture a rubber-insulated rope with which he could telegraph through water.

As a result of the political situation (Napoleon's Russian campaign), the Russian embassy was abolished, and on July 20, 1812 he traveled to Saint Petersburg , where he continued his experiments. In the autumn of 1812 he succeeded in detonating powder mines remotely with a galvanic guide cable laid across the Neva and his ignition device.

1813-1814 he took part in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon. In 1813 he was staff officer in the Saumschen hussar regiment. On February 27, 1814 he was in Bar-sur-Aube , France , in Fère-Champenoise in March and moved into Paris on March 31 . Here he astonished many when he used his rope to ignite powder through the Seine.

From October 1814 he served again at the College of Foreign Affairs. In Germany he got to know lithography , recognized its advantages for administrative processes, and was sent back to Munich to study this printing process. In July 1815 he was referred to Alois Senefelder for the lithography by Sömmering . At the end of December he undertook electrical experiments together with Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger , who was on a trip to England via Paris (and who invented the Schweigger multiplier in 1820). In 1818 the first lithographic institute in Russia was established under his leadership.

In April 1818, Emperor Alexander I made him Knight of the Order of Saint Anne, Second Class. He also became a foreign member of the Mineralogical Society in St. Petersburg and in 1819 an honorary member of the Academy.

Sömmering had moved to Frankfurt in 1820, where Schilling visited him at the end of 1823.

Out of an interest in foreign languages ​​and scripts, he studied Chinese and applied lithography to printing oriental texts in a previously unknown quality. The print of Sānzì Jīng (1819) was no less than that of the Beijing court printing press . In 1828 he was appointed to the Real State Council and from May 1830 to March 1832 he was sent on a business trip to Mongolia with the sinologist Hyacinth Bitschurin to study the conditions on the Chinese border. There he studied East Asian languages ​​and put together a collection of Chinese, Tibetan and Mongolian scripts and ethnographies . As an orientalist, he was in contact with Heinrich Julius Klaproth in Paris and August Wilhelm Schlegel in Berlin, to whom he provided impulses, particularly on the Tibetan language. He donated a Mongolian and Tibetan collection to the Institut de France.

From 1832 he worked again on the telegraph. He placed a horizontally floating magnetic needle suspended from a silk thread between a Schweigger multiplier (coil with many turns). A rudder that was immersed in mercury prevented the needle from vibrating. First he needed five such devices to represent the alphabet and numbers. In the following, he simplified the set-up so that he could display all characters with one device.

After Sömmerings example, he devised a separate Alarum (alarm apparatus, electric. Bell).

Emperor Nicholas visited him to see the telegraph experiments.

When he presented his telegraph to Alexander von Humboldt in Berlin in 1833 , Gauß and Wilhelm Eduard Weber had already constructed and used their one-needle telegraph, which had proven itself in practice.

In May 1835 he traveled again to Western Europe. At the annual meeting of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors held in Bonn on September 23, 1835 , he presented his improved needle telegraph . Georg Wilhelm Munke took up this and presented it in his lectures in Heidelberg - through which it was then disseminated in England through Charles Wheatstone . ( Cesare Cantù recalled that Gian Domenico Romagnosi had already experimented with magnetic needles in 1802.) In 1836, in Vienna with Baron Jacquin and Andreas von Ettingshausen, he attempted the best possible transmission of the galvanic current.

In Germany and Russia, where he had suggested specific telegraphic transmission lines in 1837, his ideas received little attention. Only after successfully testing a telegraphic transmission over a 10 km long underwater line in 1836 did Tsar Nicholas I order the construction of an approximately 30 km long electrically operated telegraph line from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo ( Pushkin ) on May 19, 1837 , but that was not realized because of Schilling's death.

Web links

• Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Paul Ludwig Schilling von Cannstatt. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bulletin de L'Academie imperiale des Sciences de S-Petersbourg ; 1860, p. 99
2. ↑ Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung from 1815
3. ↑ NDB
4. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.