Pavel Schilling

Baron Paul Schilling, also known as Pavel Lvovitch Schilling (1786 to 1837), was a Russian inventor, military officer and diplomat of Baltic German origin, born in Reval, now Tallinn. He spent most of his career in the imperial Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but he is best known for pioneering work in electrical telegraphy, which he undertook on his own initiative. While in Munich he worked with Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, and he developed the first electromagnetic telegraph of practical use, a needle telegraph that used magnetised needles hung over a current carrying coil. His six needle design coded the Russian alphabet in binary, which his source calls the first use of binary coding in telecommunications, and it needed far fewer wires than Sömmerring's system. Tsar Nicholas I planned to install his telegraph on a link to Kronstadt but cancelled the project after Schilling died in 1837.