Baron Pavel Lvovitch Schilling (1786–1837), also known as Paul Schilling, was a Russian military officer and diplomat of Baltic German origin. The majority of his career was spent working for the imperial Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a language officer at the Russian embassy in Munich. As a military officer, he took part in the War of the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon. In his later career, he was transferred to the Asian department of the ministry and undertook a tour of Mongolia to collect ancient manuscripts. Schilling is best known for his pioneering work in electrical telegraphy, which he undertook at his own initiative. While in Munich, he worked with Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring who was developing an electrochemical telegraph. Schilling developed the first electromagnetic telegraph that was of practical use. Schilling's design was a needle telegraph using magnetised needles suspended by a thread over a current-carrying coil. His design also greatly reduced the number of wires compared to Sömmerring's system by the use of binary coding. Tsar Nicholas I planned to install Schilling's telegraph on a link to Kronstadt, but cancelled the project after Schilling died. Other technological interests of Schilling included lithography 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 by Moritz von Jacobi, his assistant and successor as head of the St. Petersburg electrical engineering workshop. Biography Early life Baron Pavel Lvovitch Schilling von Cannstadt was born in Reval (now Tallinn), Estonia, on 16 April 1786 (N.S.). He was an ethnic German of Swabian and Baltic descent. Soon after the birth of Pavel, their first child, Ludwig von Schilling was promoted to the commander of the 23rd Nizovsky infantry regiment, and the family relocated to Kazan where the regiment was based. Pavel spent his childhood years in Kazan; early exposure to diverse Asiatic cultures explains his lasting interest in the Orient. 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 the First Cadet Corps. By this time, tsar Paul's haphazard management had reduced military education to mere exhibition drill; Schilling's proper training commenced only after graduation, in 1802. He was commissioned as