Brief biography of the shilling.  Virtual Computer Museum

Russian scientist, electrical engineer, inventor of the world's first electromagnetic telegraph

P. L. Schilling was born on April 5 (16) in Revel (Tallinn). In 1797 he was admitted to the First Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg, where he studied until 1802, after graduation he was enrolled in E.V. for the quartermaster. In 1803 he was accepted into the service of the College of Foreign Affairs. Until 1812 he worked in the Russian mission in Munich. Member of the War of 1812. AT active army joined voluntarily, participated in the battles. In 1814, for military merit, he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir and a saber with the inscription "For Bravery".

After his departure from the army, he was offered a job in the Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a person well-informed in matters of Oriental studies and very interested in them. In the field of Oriental studies, he achieved significant results, which were highly appreciated: in 1822 he was awarded the title of corresponding member of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and in 1824 he was awarded a diploma from the British Society of Asiatic Literature. It was in the specialty of oriental literature and art that in 1828 Pavel Lvovich Schilling was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He also wrote works on cryptography, research and inventions of various coding systems.

Pavel Lvovich Schilling studied electrical engineering. For a long time he worked on solving the technical problem of exploding powder charges using a current source connected to them by an insulated wire, and in September-October 1812 he "blew up mines on the Neva". He also conducted many experiments on the use of electricity for domestic needs, including electric lighting. In 1816, P. L. Schilling opened the first lithograph in Russia in St. Petersburg, adapting it for the needs of cartography.

PL Schilling is known as the inventor of the world's first electromagnetic telegraph. In 1832, with the help of the mechanic I. A. Shveikin, with whom he subsequently created all the telegraph complexes, he made a keyboard six-multiplier telegraph apparatus. On October 9 (21), 1832, he organized a demonstration of his telegraph in his apartment (Marsovo Pole, 7). To transmit messages, he proposed a rational code (a special alphabet). In the history of technology, three models of P. L. Schilling's electromagnetic telegraph are known. In addition, he was proposed to use an "alarm clock" (call) to attract the attention of those working on the device.

In 1836, he was asked to build, for the purpose of long-term testing, an experimental underground telegraph line between the extreme premises of the Main Admiralty, and in 1837, Schilling, on the basis of the "highest order", received an order to build an electric telegraph line between St. Petersburg and Kronstadt. However sudden death(August 6, NS, 1837) prevented the implementation of this project. Pavel Lvovich Schilling was buried at the Smolensk Lutheran cemetery. On July 25 (August 6), 1901, a memorial plaque was opened on the house where he lived and died (Marsovo Pole, 7).

Baron Paul (Pavel Lvovich) Schilling von Kanstadt was born on April 5 (April 16 according to the new style), 1786 in Revel (Tallinn) in the family of a Russian army officer. He spent the first eleven years of his life in Kazan, where his father commanded the 23rd Nizovsky Infantry Regiment. After the death of his father, Pavel Lvovich entered the cadet corps, which he graduated from in 1802.

Despite a promising appointment to the General Staff, after only a year of service, the 17-year-old Pavel leaves the army and goes to serve as a provincial secretary in the Russian embassy in Munich. The young diplomat was not overloaded with routine work; however, he used his free time for activities that were not quite usual at this age. Pavel prefers the so-called “Museum”, which served as a scientific club for researchers of various directions, to dinner parties and the society of Munich young ladies. Communication with them replaced universities for Schilling and gave a lot to form him as a scientist. It was in Munich that Schilling first thought about transmitting messages using electricity, participating in the experiments of the anatomist Semmering with an electrolytic telegraph.

Schilling conducts his first independent research in the most advanced field of applied physics at that time - electrical engineering, studying the nature of "electrogalvanism" and the possibility of its practical use. Two years of work on the improvement of chemical current sources and insulation of conductors - and the first serious invention. Schilling was the first to propose the use of an electric current obtained from a voltaic column for remote detonation of mines. This method was much more reliable than the canvas sleeves stuffed with gunpowder used at that time. The Schilling system operated at a distance of up to five hundred meters, and a reliably insulated wire could be laid, according to the inventor, under water. The Munich professor Semmering, who closely followed the progress of the young amateur scientist, writes in his diary in May 1812: "Schilling rejoices like a child in his electrical conductor."

Until the end of 1812, Schilling had the opportunity to demonstrate another of his discoveries - the Semmering telegraph, somewhat modernized by him.

New, 1813, Pavel Lvovich met already in the army, in the ranks of the 3rd Sumy Hussar Regiment. He shows remarkable courage in battles, marked by orders and a nominal saber "For Courage".

In 1814, as part of the Russian troops, he enters Paris. But Paris for Schilling is not so much the capital of the defeated Napoleon, but the largest scientific center. Schilling uses the six-month wait for demobilization in the French capital to draw closer to such natural scientists as D. Arago and A. Ampère. A short stay in Paris gives impetus to another lifelong passion - a friendship with some Orientalist scholars arouses in Schilling an interest in the study of the East and Oriental languages.

The next decade was almost entirely devoted to oriental studies, work both in Russia and among French, Italian, and British Orientalists. The result is widespread recognition: Schilling is elected a corresponding member of the national corporation of French orientalists, a member of the British Society of Asian Literature. And in 1828 - a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. By this time, he was a generally recognized authority in Russia in the study of written monuments of Eastern literature, the owner of a large collection of rare Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese works he collected.

In addition, in 1814-15, Schilling found an unusual occupation for himself - he began to prepare the opening of lithography in St. Petersburg - a new production in what was then Russia for reproduction of topographic maps and other military documents.

Organized by Schilling upon arrival in St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1816, civil lithography at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly became a model institution and attracted great attention in the circle of educated St. Petersburg society. Here he reproduced the Chinese texts of the Tresloviya, translated by N. Ya. Bichurin.

First literary work, lithographed by Schilling, was the poem "Dangerous Neighbor" by Vasily Lvovich Pushkin, the uncle of the great poet. Soon Schilling met Alexander Sergeevich himself. The first reliable news of their meeting dates back to the autumn of 1818, when both of them, in the company of mutual friends, among whom were Zhukovsky, Gnedich, Lunin, are present at Batyushkov's farewell to Italy. The first meeting is followed by others, the relationship grows stronger, but in the early 1920s, the acquaintance is interrupted: while Pushkin is in exile in the south, Schilling travels a lot abroad, enthusiastically surrendering to oriental studies. At the end of the decade, this acquaintance is to be renewed and then develop into friendship.

Meanwhile, Schilling's captivating nature does not allow him to lock himself in any one area for a long time. And so, in between the study of ancient Buddhist manuscripts, the researcher begins to think about the problem, in the first clumsy attempts to solve which he participated a decade and a half ago in Munich. During this time, electrical engineering has gone far ahead - a book by V.V. Petrov about galvanism - the scientific outlook of Schilling himself expanded. In any case, by 1825 (so, at least, the English historian of communication technology John Feyai believes) he had a completely complete idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe principles of operation and the necessary components of an electromagnetic telegraph.

Now Schilling is faced mainly with practical tasks: the development of an optimal design of the apparatus, the development of a device and method for laying telegraph lines, and other large and small issues; the difficulties of overcoming them are well known to today's inventors, but without their solution, the invention cannot be put into practice.

With the development of the elements, Schilling, however, was lucky. The war with Turkey, which began in 1828, puts before the command of the Russian army the task of quickly capturing a number of powerfully fortified Turkish fortresses. Schilling's noisy experiments with explosions of electric mines on the Neva and in the suburbs of the capital were remembered by the St. Petersburg generals, and suddenly the scientist receives wide state support for his electrical experiments. Considerable funds have been allocated from the treasury, under the command of Schilling there is a sapper team with several officers at the head, several training grounds have been provided to choose from. Orders for parts, wire, components of batteries - all this is immediately transferred to the Izhora and Aleksandrovsky plants, and, if necessary, sent to England.

The war, however, ends the next year with the victory of Russian weapons without the help of the Schilling mine. The emperor himself rebelled against using it even in the war with Napoleon. But field tests of mines continue, and General Schilder, who did not have time to use the "ultra-modern" weapon near Silistria, chooses it as the main means of attack for his submarine project. (It was assumed that this submarine would secretly thrust a harpoon with a mine attached to it into the bottom of the enemy ship and, moving to a safe distance, blow it up through a wire wound under water.)

Schilling's first telegraph apparatus began to operate as early as 1828, but it did not reach a public demonstration. Passion for oriental studies, combined this time with official necessity, forces him to change plans again: from 1829 to 1831, Schilling actively participates in an expedition to Eastern Siberia to "survey the situation of the local population and the state of trade near the northern and western borders of China." Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences P.L. Schilling returned to St. Petersburg only in the spring of 1832.

Schilling, following Ampère and Fechner, based his telegraph on the "pointer" indication of the transmitted symbols. By 1832 the principles of pointer indication magnetic field have already been developed very carefully. As early as 1821, André Ampère proposed a surprisingly elegant astatic hand, consisting of two coaxially fixed magnetic hands oriented in opposite directions. Such an arrow is completely insensitive to the Earth's magnetic field. If one of the arrows of an astatic pair is placed inside the turns of the coil, and the other - above them, then the arrows will deviate only under the action of the magnetic field of the coil (directed in opposite directions in the zones of their placement).

The German scientist I. Schweigger invented a device that enhances the deviation of the arrow and was called a multiplier (multiplier). It was a frame consisting of several turns of wire, inside of which a magnetic needle was placed. Experiments have shown that an increase in the number of turns of the coil enhances the action of the current on the needle. In 1825, the Italian physicist L. Nobili combined A. Ampere's astatic pair with I. Schweigger's multiplier and thereby increased the sensitivity of the device. All these technical solutions to some extent influenced the design of the Schilling telegraph, without depriving it, however, of originality.

There were six multipliers in the basic design of Schilling's telegraph. The seventh multiplier served to actuate the call bell with a clock mechanism. In this design, the transmitter was already made in the form of a keypad, consisting of eight keys (4 white and 4 black). The transmission line had eight wires. Six pairs of keys were connected by wires with the corresponding six multipliers, one pair with a ringing device. There was another "common pair" of keys for switching the polarity of the galvanic battery.

Schilling's telegraph work proceeded as follows. If it was necessary to transmit a “white” signal, the operator pressed a white key connected to the corresponding multiplier. In this case, one should also press the white key "common pair". Accordingly, when a black key was pressed (and the same in the “common pair”), a “black” signal was transmitted. Unpressed keys corresponded to the "neutral" position.

However, Schilling did not just hang a black-and-white disk on the hands to facilitate visual indication - he was the first in the world to use a binary code to transmit information:

Each of the six indicators could take one of two working positions; the combination of these provisions made it possible to transmit 2 to the 6th power of code units, i.e. 64 units, which was more than enough to designate all letters of the alphabet, numbers and special characters.

The first public demonstration of Schilling's electromagnetic telegraph was held in the autumn of 1832 in his apartment on the Tsaritsyn meadow (now the Field of Mars, house 7). Present at one of the first demonstrations of the telegraph, the prominent scientist B.S. Jacobi, who soon became famous for his work in the field of electromagnetism, appreciated the contribution of P. L. Schilling in this way: “Schilling had the special advantage that, in his official position, he was well aware of the country's needs for communications. Satisfying these needs constituted the task that he sought to solve throughout his life, on the one hand, drawing on the successes of natural science, on the other hand, directing his exceptionally sharp mind to the creation and compilation of the simplest code. AT last thing he was greatly assisted by his special knowledge of Oriental languages. Two completely different branches of knowledge - natural sciences and oriental studies - merged together to help the emergence of the telegraph ... "

The apparatus of Baron P. L. Schilling described above “about six indicators and eight wires” allowed the telegraphy technique to make a huge leap - from several dozen pairs of wires carrying information to only six. The date October 21, 1832 entered the history of technology as the birthday of the first practical design of the electromagnetic telegraph, and the design itself glorified the inventor forever.

But for Schilling it was a conscious step backwards. Back in 1825, he developed a system with one indicator and, most importantly, one (!) Pair of wires. The binary code Schilling had already been invented by that time, and in his first design, the author decided to transmit code symbols sequentially. This means that in order to recognize each letter or number, it was necessary to read a code sequence of 5-6 black and white binary characters. At present, this is a simple task, but the gain in the number of conductors, in simplifying the laying of the line itself, is enormous. The way to the practical use of the telegraph was opened. But the author refrained from public demonstration of this construction for a long time. Why?

The fact is that for Schilling's predecessors, the determination of the transmitted letter was an extremely simple task: it was read directly from the device. The appearance of a bubble in the electrolyte, the movement of the arrow in the corresponding indicator clearly indicated the transmitted letter. A peculiar stereotype was already formed in a small company of then telegraph operators: letter recognition should be instantaneous and simple. In the Schilling system, the operator of the receiving station had to first register (write down or remember) a six-character code message, and then decipher it. In a very critical analysis of his first system, P.L. Schilling suggested that the complexity of remembering the premise would override the numerous advantages of this system. And to please the stereotype, he takes a step back: complicates his telegraph, bringing the number of multipliers and signal wires to six. Unfortunately, it was this more cumbersome, “geared” version of the telegraph system that became for the history of technology “the first practical electromagnetic telegraph by P.L. Schilling", served as the starting point for subsequent improvements to the telegraph.

More than one inventor after Schilling became famous by reducing the number of line wires to two, in a way in which the baron himself voluntarily took a step back. After all, if he stopped at a single-indicator version of the system with serial transmission of symbols, only one step would separate him from the Morse apparatus - the solution of the issue of graphic recording of signals.

The government also draws attention to the invention, which was highly appreciated by Russian naturalists. The first line connects the Winter Palace and the Ministry of Railways. The second, which uses an eight-core cable, is laid five miles long and connects the outermost premises of the Admiralty, passing along the surrounding streets and, partially, along the bottom of the canal. When testing, Schilling uses a single multiplier apparatus and, by connecting two pairs of wires at the end of the cable, increases the actual length of the line to 10 versts.

In May 1837, Nicholas I organized a special commission for the construction of a telegraph line between Peterhof and Kronstadt. In a letter to the naval minister, who headed it, Prince A.S. Menshikov, Schilling, after giving a detailed description of the design of his telegraph and the prospects for its use, remarks: “Having described my telegraph, it remains for me to point out some of its advantages over those currently used: 1) that its speed is incomparably greater; 2) that it operates in rainy and foggy weather; 3) that he does not arouse the attention of the public during the action; 4) that it does not require the construction of special high towers and is maintained by a very small number of people; and, finally, 5) that the original institution of it costs less than in ordinary telegraphs.

The inventor proposed to abandon underground wires and place them above the ground on poles. Members of the commission literally ridiculed him. In 1857, B. S. Yakobi wrote in a report to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences: “This prudent proposal was met by members of the commission with unfriendly and mocking exclamations. Later, one of the members of the commission said to him in my presence: "My dear friend, your proposal is madness, your aerial wires are truly ridiculous."

Unfortunately, Schilling did not have time to start building the Peterhof-Kronstadt line. unexpected death August 6, 1837 interrupted his plans.

November 9th, 2015

How a friend of Alexander Pushkin invented the world's first telegraph, electric mine explosion and the strongest cipher

The inventor of the world's first telegraph and the author of the first mine explosion in the history of mankind through an electric wire. Creator of the world's first telegraph code and the best secret cipher in the 19th century. A friend of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and the creator of the first lithography in Russia (a method of replicating images). Russian hussar who stormed Paris, and the first researcher of Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism in Europe, scientist and diplomat. All this is one person - Pavel Lvovich Schilling, an outstanding Russian inventor of the era of Pushkin and the Napoleonic wars. Perhaps one of the last representatives of the galaxy of encyclopedists, "universal scientists" of the Enlightenment, who left a bright mark in many areas of world science and technology that are often far from each other.

Oh, how many wonderful discoveries we have

Prepare enlightenment spirit

And Experience, the son of difficult mistakes,

And Genius, paradoxes friend ...

These famous Pushkin lines, according to most researchers of the great poet's work, are dedicated specifically to Pavel Schilling and were written in those days when their author, together with him, was going on an expedition to the Far East, to the borders of Mongolia and China.

Everyone knows the genius of Russian poetry, while his learned friend is much less known. Although it rightfully occupies an important place in Russian science and history.

Profile of Pavel Schilling, drawn by A.S. Pushkin in the album of E.N. Ushakova in November 1829

The world's first electric mine

The future inventor of the telegraph was born on the lands Russian Empire in Reval on April 16, 1786. In accordance with the origin and tradition, the baby was named Paul Ludwig, Baron von Schilling von Kanstadt. His father was a German baron who transferred to the Russian service, where he rose to the rank of colonel, and received the highest military award for bravery - the Order of St. George.

A few months after his birth, the future author of many inventions ended up in the very center of Russia, in Kazan, where his father commanded the Nizovsky Infantry Regiment. Paul spent all his childhood here, here he became Pavel, from here, at the age of 11, after the death of his father, he left for St. Petersburg to study in the cadet corps. In the documents of the Russian Empire, he was recorded as Pavel Lvovich Schilling - under this name he entered Russian history.

During his studies, Pavel Schilling showed an aptitude for mathematics and topography, therefore, upon graduation cadet corps in 1802 he was enrolled in the Quartermaster of His Imperial Majesty's retinue - the prototype of the General Staff, where the young officer was engaged in the preparation of topographic maps and staff calculations.

In those years, a big war was brewing in the center of Europe between Napoleonic France and Tsarist Russia. And General Staff Officer Pavel Schilling was transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a secretary he served in the Russian embassy in Munich, then the capital of an independent Bavarian state.

Schilling became an employee of our military intelligence- At that time, the functions of a diplomat and intelligence officer were mixed even more than in our time. Bavaria was then the actual vassal of Napoleon, and Petersburg needed to know about the internal situation and the military potential of this kingdom.

But Munich at that time was also one of the centers of German science. Rotating in the circles of high society, the young diplomat and intelligence officer got acquainted not only with aristocrats and the military, but also with outstanding European scientists of his time. As a result, Pavel Schilling became interested in studying oriental languages ​​​​and experiments with electricity.

Mankind then only discovered the secrets of the movement of electric charges, various "galvanic" experiments were considered more like fun entertainment. But Pavel Schilling suggested that the spark electric charge in wires it is capable of replacing a powder wick in military affairs.

Meanwhile, a big war with Napoleon began, in July 1812 the Russian embassy was evacuated to St. Petersburg, and here Pavel Schilling immediately offered his invention to the military department. He undertook to undermine the powder charge under water so that minefields could be made that could reliably cover the capital of the Russian Empire from the sea. At the height of the Patriotic War, when Napoleon's soldiers occupied Moscow, in St. Petersburg on the banks of the Neva, several of the world's first experimental explosions of powder charges under water using electricity were carried out.

Maps for the Russian army

Experiments with electric mines were successful. Contemporaries called them "long-range ignition." In December 1812, the Life Guards Sapper Battalion was formed, in which they continued further work on Schilling's experiments on electric fuses and explosions. The author of the invention himself, refusing a comfortable diplomatic rank, volunteered for the Russian army. In the rank of headquarters captain of the Sumy Hussar Regiment, in 1813-1814 he went through all the main battles with Napoleon in Germany and France. For the battles on the outskirts of Paris, Captain Schilling was awarded a very rare and honorable award - a nominal weapon, a saber with the inscription "For Bravery". But his contribution to the final defeat of Napoleon's army was not only the courage of cavalry attacks - it was Pavel Schilling who provided the Russian army with topographic maps for an offensive in France.

"The Battle of Fer-Champenoise". Painting by V. Timm

Previously, maps were drawn by hand, and in order to supply all the numerous Russian units with them, there was neither time nor the required number of skilled specialists. The hussar officer Schilling at the end of 1813 informed Tsar Alexander I that the German Mannheim was the first successful experiment in the world in lithography - copying drawings.

The essence of this latest technology for that time was that a drawing or text is applied to a specially selected and polished limestone with a special “lithographic” ink. Then the surface of the stone is "etched" - treated with a special chemical composition. Etched areas not covered with lithographic ink after such treatment repel printing ink, and printing ink, on the contrary, easily sticks to the places where the drawing was applied. This makes it possible to quickly and efficiently make numerous prints of drawings from such a “lithographic stone”.

By order of the tsar, Pavel Schilling arrived in Mannheim with a squadron of hussars, where he found specialists and the necessary equipment who had previously participated in lithographic experiments. In the rear of the Russian army, under the leadership of Schilling, they quickly organized the production of a large number of maps of France, urgently needed on the eve of the decisive offensive against Napoleon. At the end of the war, the workshop created by Schilling was relocated to St. Petersburg, to the Military Topographic Depot of the General Staff.

The strongest cipher of the 19th century

In Paris captured by the Russians, while everyone is celebrating the victory, hussar Schilling first of all gets acquainted with French scientists. Especially often, on the basis of interest in electricity, he communicates with Andre Ampère, a man who entered the history of world science as the author of the terms "electric current" and "cybernetics", by whose name descendants will name the unit of current strength.

André Ampère

But in addition to the “electrical” hobby, the scientist-hussar Schilling has a new big task - he studies captured French ciphers, learns to decipher others and create his own cryptography techniques. Therefore, soon after the defeat of Napoleon, the hussar Schilling takes off his uniform and returns to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he is officially engaged in the creation of a lithographic printing house - then a significant part of diplomatic activity was a lively correspondence, and technical copying of documents helped to speed up the work and facilitate the work of many scribes. As Schilling's friends joked, he was generally carried away by lithography because his active nature could not stand the tedious copying by hand: lithography, which at that time was hardly known to anyone ... ".

But the creation of a lithograph for the Foreign Ministry became only the outer part of his work. In reality, Pavel Schilling works in the Secret Expedition of the Digital Unit - that was the name of the Foreign Ministry's encryption department at the time. It was Schilling who was the first in the history of world diplomacy to introduce into practice the use of special bigram ciphers - when complex algorithm pairs of letters are encrypted with numbers, but located not in a row, but in the order of another given algorithm. Such fonts were so complex that they were used until the advent of electrical and electronic encryption systems during the Second World War.

The theoretical principle of bigram encryption was known long before Schilling, but for self made it was so complicated and time-consuming that it had not been applied in practice before. Schilling, on the other hand, invented a special mechanical device for such encryption - a collapsible table pasted on paper, which made it easy to encrypt digrams.

At the same time, Schilling additionally strengthened bigram encryption: he introduced "dummies" (encryption of individual letters) and the addition of text with a chaotic set of characters. As a result, such a cipher became so stable that it took European mathematicians more than half a century to learn how to break it, and Pavel Schilling himself rightfully earned the title of the most outstanding Russian cryptographer of the 19th century. A few years after the invention of Schilling, new ciphers were used not only by Russian diplomats, but also by the military. By the way, it was the hard work on ciphers that saved Pavel Schilling from fashion ideas Decembrists and, perhaps, saved an outstanding person for Russia.

"Russian Cagliostro" and Pushkin

All contemporaries familiar with him, who left memoirs, agree that Pavel Lvovich Schilling was an extraordinary person. And first of all, everyone notes his extraordinary sociability.

He impressed the high society of St. Petersburg with the ability to play several games of chess at once, without looking at the boards and always winning. Schilling, who loved to have fun, entertained Petersburg society not only with a game and interesting stories but also different scientific experiments. Foreigners nicknamed him "Russian Cagliostro" - for mysterious experiments with electricity and knowledge of the then mysterious Far East.

Pavel Schilling became interested in Eastern, or, as they used to say, “Oriental” countries as a child, when he grew up in Kazan, which was then the center of Russian trade with China. Even during his diplomatic service in Munich, and then in Paris, where the leading European center of Oriental studies was then located, Pavel Schilling studied Chinese. As a cryptographer, a specialist in ciphers, he was attracted by mysterious hieroglyphs and incomprehensible oriental manuscripts.

The Russian diplomat Schilling put his interest in the East into practice. Having established a new encryption, in 1830 he volunteered to lead a diplomatic mission to the borders of China and Mongolia. Most diplomats preferred enlightened Europe, so the tsar approved Schilling's candidacy without hesitation.

One of the participants in the eastern expedition was to be Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. While still engaged in lithography, Schilling could not resist the “hooligan act”, he wrote by hand and reproduced in a lithographic way the poems of Vasily Lvovich Pushkin, the uncle of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, a well-known writer in Moscow and St. Petersburg. This is how the first manuscript in Russian was born, reproduced by technical copying. After defeating Napoleon and returning to Russia, Vasily Pushkin introduced Schilling to his nephew. Acquaintance of Alexander Pushkin with Schilling grew into a long and strong friendship.

On January 7, 1830, Pushkin turned to the chief of the gendarmes, Benckendorff, with a request to enroll him in the Schilling expedition: "... I would ask your permission to visit China with the embassy going there." Unfortunately, the tsar did not include the poet in the list of members of the diplomatic mission to the borders of Mongolia and China, depriving the descendants of Pushkin's poems about Siberia and Far East. Only the stanzas written by the great poet about his desire to go on a long journey with Schilling's embassy have survived:

Let's go, I'm ready; where are you, friends,

Wherever you want, I'm ready for you

Follow everywhere, arrogantly running away:

To the foot of the wall of distant China ...

The world's first practical telegraph

In the spring of 1832, the Far Eastern embassy, ​​which included the future founder of Russian Sinology, Archimandrite Nikita Bichurin, returned to St. Petersburg, and five months later, on October 9, the first demonstration of the operation of its first telegraph took place. Before that, Europe had already tried to create devices for transmitting electrical signals over a distance, but all such devices required a separate wire to transmit each letter and sign - that is, a kilometer of such a “telegraph” required about 30 km of wires.

Nikita Bichurin

The telegraph invented by Schilling used only two wires - this was the first working model, which could be used not only for experiments, but also in practice. Data transmission was carried out by various combinations of eight black and white keys, and the receiver consisted of two arrows, the signals transmitted over the wires were displayed by their location relative to the black and white disk. In fact, Schilling was the first in the world to use a binary code, on the basis of which all digital and computer technology works today.

Already in 1835, the Schilling telegraph connected the premises of the vast Winter Palace and the palace itself with the Admiralty, and under the chairmanship of the Minister of Marine, a Committee was created to consider the electromagnetic telegraph. They began to conduct the first experiments on laying a telegraph cable underground and under water.

At the same time, work did not stop on the method proposed by Schilling for the electrical detonation of sea mines. On March 21, 1834, on the Obvodny Canal near the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg, the inventor demonstrated to Tsar Nicholas I the electric detonation of underwater mines. From that moment in Russia, active work began on the creation of underwater minefields.

In 1836, Schilling received a tempting offer for a lot of money to begin work on the introduction of the telegraph invented by him in England. However, the author of the invention refused to leave Russia and took up the project of constructing the first large telegraph between Peterhof and Kronstadt, the wires for which he planned to lay along the bottom of the Gulf of Finland.

Pavel Schilling's telegraph apparatus

The project of such a telegraph was approved by the tsar on May 19, 1837. For his submarine cable, Schilling was the first in the world to propose insulating the wires with rubber, natural rubber. At the same time, Schilling voiced a project to connect Peterhof and St. Petersburg by telegraph, for which he planned to hang copper wire on ceramic insulators from poles along the Peterhof road. It was the world's first proposal for a modern type of electrical networks! But then the tsarist officials took Schilling's project as a wild fantasy. Adjutant General Pyotr Kleinmichel, the same one who will soon build the first railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, then laughed and said to Schilling: “My dear friend, your proposal is madness, your overhead wires are truly ridiculous.”

Pavel Schilling never saw the realization of his visionary ideas. He died on August 6, 1837, having outlived his friend Alexander Pushkin for a very short time. Shortly after the death of the Russian inventor, telegraph networks began to envelop Earth, and the underwater mines he invented with electrical detonation during Crimean War 1853-1856 reliably covered St. Petersburg and Kronstadt from the then dominant English fleet in the Baltic.

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An outstanding domestic electrical engineer, linguist, historian, inventor of the world's first electromagnetic telegraph, Paul (Pavel Lvovich) Schilling was born on April 16, 1786 in Reval (Tallinn) in the family of a Russian army colonel, Baron Ludwig Joseph Ferdinand Schilling von Kanstadt. In the ninth year of his birth, he was already enrolled as an ensign, in the twelfth he was accepted into the 1st Cadet Corps, from which he left as a second lieutenant of the emperor's retinue. However, the young man was irresistibly attracted to science. A year later, seventeen-year-old Pavel Schilling leaves military service, is transferred to the College of Foreign Affairs and is sent as an interpreter to the Russian embassy in Munich, where his stepfather, Baron Karl Yakovlevich Buhler, was an envoy. In Munich, under the influence of the famous physiologist and anatomist Samuel Thomas Sömmering, who experimented with the use of galvanic current, Schilling became interested in electricity, and after returning to Russia two years later, he unveiled his first serious invention - a remote electric mine fuse, which was successfully demonstrated to Alexander I in October 1812. when undermining underwater mines on the Neva. In the same year, the young scientist presented to the emperor another invention - the Sömmering telegraph modernized by him.
In 1813, Pavel Schilling returned to military service. For the courage shown in the battles in France, the headquarters captain of the Sumy Hussar Regiment Schilling received the Order of St. Vladimir and a nominal saber. After the war, he again leaves the army and leaves for Munich to study lithography, after which in 1818 he creates the First exemplary lithography in St. Petersburg under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He introduced important improvements in lithographic art, which made it possible, in particular, to print the text of the Chinese manuscript published by N. Ya. Bichurin. From that time on, a passion for the East began, which lasted about 10 years. The Russian government organized an expedition to Eastern Siberia "to survey the situation of the local population and the state of trade near the northern and western borders of China." P.L. Schilling was appointed the leader of the expedition, who attracted the aforementioned N.Ya. Pushkin became close to Schilling upon his return from southern exile and even sketched his pencil portrait in E.N. Ushakova's album. The idea of ​​the expedition captivated the poet, as evidenced by the poetic message to friends - Schilling, Solomirsky, Bichurin:

Let's go, I'm ready;
where are you, friends,
Wherever you want
I'm ready for you
Follow everywhere
haughty running away:
To the foot of the wall
distant China...
The letter is dated December 1829. At the same time, in the same Pushkin notebook, a rough sketch appears, which many researchers refer specifically to Schilling:

About how many discoveries we have
wonderful
Prepare enlightenment spirit
And experience, son of mistakes
difficult
And genius, paradoxes friend,
And the case, God is the inventor ...

On January 7, 1830, Pushkin filed a petition in the name of A.Kh.
For two years, P.L. Schilling wandered around Transbaikalia, Mongolia and the regions bordering China, studied the languages ​​of Asian peoples, collected a collection of Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan, Japanese and Indian manuscripts (now this collection contains 2600 volumes), costumes, utensils, objects of religious worship. In the spring of 1832 the expedition returned to St. Petersburg. The metropolitan society enthusiastically meets the traveler. The government grants him the Order of St. Stanislav II degree "in consideration of the zealous service and in the highest approval for the continuation of research on the part natural sciences whose usefulness has already been justified by experience. PL Schilling was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a national corporation of French orientalists and a member of the British Society of Asian Literature.
At the same time, the scientist continues to improve the telegraph apparatus. In the autumn of 1832, the first public demonstration of the "Schilling telegraph system" took place at his apartment - already a keyboard, fundamentally different from the Sömmering system. On its basis, P.L. Schilling subsequently developed the design of an electromagnetic telegraph, in which the transmission of signals was carried out using a special six-digit code. Thus, he was several years ahead of Morse in creating a telegraphic language: “I found a way to express all possible speeches with two signs and apply any telegraphic words or signal book to these two signs.”
P.L. Schilling demonstrated his apparatus in 1835 in Bonn at the congress of the German Society of Naturalists and Physicians. The chairman of the congress, Professor of Heidelberg University and honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Georg Munke unconditionally recognized the priority of the Russian scientist in the field of telegraphy. The British offered Pavel Lvovich to introduce his invention to them, but he wanted to start with Russia. Nicholas I ordered the establishment of a special committee to test the Schilling apparatus. The test - the transmission of the dispatch through submarine cables - was successful. However, the sudden death of the inventor, which followed in 1837, prevented Russia from becoming the first country in the world with a telegraph message.
After that, the name of Pavel Lvovich Schilling was forgotten for a long time. The “fathers” of the telegraph were proclaimed either by the American Morse, or by the British Cook and Wheatstone ... The priority of P.L. Schilling was restored only in 1859 by Academician Iosif Gamel (Hamel Joseph. Historical essay on electric telegraphs. St. Petersburg, 1886. P. 28-45) and since then no one has challenged it.

Baron P. L. Schilling von Kanstadt and his secret

P. L. Schilling von Kanstadt

The constant increase in the number of correspondents, networks and lines of encrypted communication, the growth in the volume of cipher correspondence led to an urgent need to find a way to quickly multiply cipher documents. Finally, such a method was found and this event is associated with the name of the outstanding scientist and inventor Pavel Lvovich Schilling von Kanstadt.

With his diverse and fruitful activities, Baron Schilling has firmly entered the history of Russian science and culture. P. L. Schilling von Kanstadt was born in April 1786 in Revel in the family of the commander of the Nizovsky Musketeer Regiment. After graduating from the First Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg in 1802, he began serving in the General Staff of the Russian Army with the rank of second lieutenant. In 1803, family circumstances forced Schilling to leave military service and transfer to the College of Foreign Affairs, where he worked as an interpreter for the Russian mission in Munich. As a result of the aggravation of relations between Russia and Napoleonic France, the Russian embassy in 1812 was hastily withdrawn from Munich to Russia. During the Patriotic War of 1812-1814. one of Schilling's remarkable personality traits is manifested - high patriotism, boundless love and devotion to Russia. After applying twice, he was appointed staff captain of the 3rd Sumy Dragoon Regiment in the army. For the bravery shown in battles, Schilling was awarded the first military order in 1814, and then one of the most honorable awards - a saber with the inscription "For Bravery". In the same year, while in Germany with the army, he became interested in the method of lithography invented back in 1798 by A. Senefelder (3) .

After the end of World War II, nothing prompted P. L. Schilling to remain in the army, and he filed a petition to return from military service to the College of Foreign Affairs. Barclay de Tolly supported this request, and in October 1814 Pavel Lvovich returned to his studies and scientific ideas. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he immediately drew the attention of the then Secretary of State of the Ministry, Count K. V. Nesselrode, who, as we know, was in charge of the office of the Ministry, to the lithographic method of printing that was then just coming into use in Europe. Schilling was immediately sent to the birthplace of the invention, to Bavaria (where the rock most suitable for lithography was mined), and, having familiarized himself with this method there, in 1817 he arranged a ministerial lithography. On June 12, 1818, Baron Schilling was appointed manager of lithography. At the same time, Schilling was the initiator of the use of this printing method for the reproduction of topographic maps and other military documents. From the same time, P. L. Schilling became the head of the digital part, which in 1832 was transformed into an expedition.

However, in scientific and cultural circles, Schilling won universal recognition by lithographing documents of a different kind, namely Chinese manuscripts. "A zealous propagandist of Chinese literature," in the words of Sinologist Academician Klaproth, Schilling achieved such a level of reproduction of Chinese manuscripts that was equal "in terms of thoroughness and elegance to the most perfect examples of Chinese printing." Klaproth noted that the Russian edition of the Chinese text "leaves far behind everything that has been published so far in Europe." Schilling was a passionate lover and connoisseur of Eastern culture. During his trip to Southern Siberia, he collected the most valuable collections of Chinese, Manchurian, Mongolian, Tibetan, Japanese and Indian manuscripts. The richest collections of these manuscripts were transferred to scientists in the Asian Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. He also collected interesting collections on the ethnography of Central Asia.

This one is definitely outstanding person known as a Petersburg acquaintance of A. S. Pushkin, K. N. Batyushkov, A. Mitskevich, A. I. Turgenev. Researchers of the life and work of A. S. Pushkin, when studying the faces of the Pushkin circle, pay special attention to P. L. Schilling, give evidence of numerous meetings of the great poet with Schilling, and even some dates. So, for example, on November 19, 1818, A. S. Pushkin and P. L. Schilling, in company with N. I. Gnedich, V. A. Zhukovsky, M. S. Lunin, A. I. Turgenev and other persons, left to Tsarskoye Selo to see off Batyushkov, who was leaving for Italy. On May 25, 1827, Pushkin, who returned from exile in St. Petersburg, together with Schilling, P. A. Vyazemsky and A. A. Olenin, took part in a walk to Kronstadt, and on June 6 Pushkin and Schilling were at the Karamzins. In November-December 1829, Schilling was preparing for an expedition to Eastern Siberia and China, accompanied by I. Ya. Bichurin, and Pushkin, according to N. V. Putyata, was going to go with them, but was refused by Benckendorff. By this time, a pencil portrait of Schilling, made by Pushkin in the album Ek. N. Ushakova. MP Pogodin later wrote about the meetings between Pushkin and Schilling in the 1830s.

P. L. Schilling was imprinted in the reviews of his contemporaries not only as a “smart, scholarly”, “extraordinarily fat person”, “a merry fellow, an excellent talker”, who played two games of chess at the same time, without looking at the chess boards, and defeated both opponents in one and the same moment. First of all, he was an outstanding and famous scientist. As an orientalist, P. L. Schilling in 1827 became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences (in the department of language and literature). Another area of ​​scientific knowledge to which P. L. Schilling made a significant contribution is electrical engineering. In 1812, for the first time, he demonstrated the explosion of an electric mine invented by him on the Neva River in St. Petersburg, then the explosion experiments were repeated in 1815, 1822 and 1827. After the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829. Schilling's electric mine was subjected to military tests, and from 1833 it was mastered in a special sapper unit.

The scientific discoveries of Oersted, who studied the effect of an electric current passing through a conductor on a nearby magnetic needle, Schweigger, who discovered that if a magnetic needle is placed inside a frame consisting of several turns of a conductor flowed around by current, then the effect of current on a magnetic needle is greatly enhanced, as well as Sturgeon, who designed the electromagnet, and other inventions created the scientific prerequisites for successfully solving the problem of transmitting messages using electrical signals.

In many countries at that time they were dealing with issues of electrical telegraphy, but P. L. Schilling was the first to create a practically suitable electromagnetic telegraph apparatus. A public demonstration of this device took place on October 21, 1832 in an apartment on the Tsaritsyn meadow in St. Petersburg (Marsovo Pole, 7). A memorial plaque erected by the Russian Technical Society in 1886 in connection with the 100th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding scientist with the following inscription has been preserved on this house: “Pavel Lvovich Schilling, the Russian inventor of the electromagnetic telegraph, lived and died here.”

Telegraph apparatus P. L. Schilling

The operation of Schilling's first telegraph apparatus was based on the phenomenon of deflection of a magnetic needle as a result of the action of an electric current. The device consisted of a keyboard transmitter and a six-pointer receiver. The transmitter and receiver were connected by a line of eight wires. In the receiver, seven wires were included in multipliers, consisting of frames with windings, with the passage of current through which the corresponding arrows deviated. The eighth wire was common. Schilling developed such a telegraph code that made it possible, when transmitting single signals, to receive the largest number of letters of the message with the smallest number the line wires required for this and "working signs", i.e., the number of triggered signal disks denoting a given letter. In the telegraph code developed by P. L. Schilling for a six-pointer electromagnetic apparatus, any letter of the alphabet was designated by one, two or maximum three working characters of the same color (white or black). Required to transmit one letter or number, the simultaneous pressing of a maximum of four (including the common) one-color keys on the device's keyboard was quite acceptable. Determining the received letter or number with the simultaneous appearance of no more than three working characters on the signal disks of the receiver also did not present any difficulties.

Thus, P. L. Schilling found a solution that made it possible to carry out the fastest telegraphy with the least number of wires necessary for this and the simplest determination of the transmitted letter or number (a combination of one, two or maximum three simultaneously appearing working characters).

To demonstrate the operation of the created apparatus, P. L. Schilling temporarily rented the entire floor from the owners of the house in which he lived. The keyboard transmitter of the apparatus was installed at one end of the floor, where the guests gathered in a small hall, and the receiver at the other end of the floor, in P. L. Schilling's office. Line wires had a length somewhat exceeding 100 m. The telegram, which consisted of a dozen words, was quickly and without distortion accepted in front of the audience. This made a huge impression on those present.

Interest in the invention in the most diverse circles of Russian society was so great that the demonstration of the operation of the electromagnetic telegraph apparatus did not stop almost until the very Christmas holidays. The outstanding Russian military engineer of that time, K. A. Schilder, having familiarized himself with the invention of P. L. Schilling, after demonstrating the device, wrote to his friend about the electromagnetic telegraph: “Soon I will tell you another interesting thing. It concerns the project of a telegraph for an indefinite distance, based on galvanism, with the help of which it will be possible at any time to telegraph with the speed of thought. I hope that it will someday be tested before Moscow, if only experiments in a small form make it obvious what is technically not subject to the slightest doubt ... ".

P. L. Schilling, from 1811 until the end of his life, was engaged in another important issue - the creation of a line practically suitable for transmitting electrical signals over an insulated wire (cable). During the installation of the telegraph apparatus, copper wires were insulated with silk or tarred hemp. So, the winding of the multipliers was made with copper wire, covered with one layer of silk yarn, and the connections between the multipliers were made with copper wire, covered with one layer of hemp, densely impregnated with ozocerite.

To lay a telegraph line between stations in the ground, P. L. Schilling used the same wires as for electric mines invented by him back in 1812. Since the transmitting and receiving stations were connected by an eight-wire line, all eight wires were enclosed in a common hemp insulation, and then tarred. The wires intended for laying in water were insulated with several layers of silk or hemp, and the wires insulated with silk were varnished in such cases.

In 1836, under the leadership of P. L. Schilling, an experimental underground cable telegraph line was laid between the outermost premises of the Admiralty building in St. Petersburg, which operated for more than a year. In the same year, Schilling proposed that line wires between telegraph stations be hung on wooden poles.

The following year, P. L. Schilling began work on the project of the first underwater telegraph communication line between Peterhof and Kronstadt, but it was not completed due to the death of Pavel Lvovich. On July 25 (6), 1837, the inventor of the electromagnetic telegraph was buried with full honors at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg.

So, the scientific merits of Pavel Lvovich Schilling are quite well known, his name is pronounced with equal respect both by scientists in the humanities and by natural scientists. And yet, until now, the full range of Schilling's scientific interests has not been represented by his biographers, one area of ​​​​his activity has remained unknown to both his contemporaries and descendants. P. L. Schilling's entourage knew that he was in the service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a responsible official. The mention of this biographical fact in various publications, it is naturally perceived by the modern reader as the activity of Pavel Lvovich in the diplomatic field, especially since he undertook trips abroad, participated in scientific expeditions abroad. In fact, P. L. Schilling von Kanstadt was the head of one of the secret expeditions of the Chancellery of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which we have already mentioned, namely the digital expedition, in addition, he was in charge of the lithography of the ministry. He held these positions until the end of his life. P. L. Schilling was one of the largest cryptographers of the 19th century, whose work should be the subject of special scientific interest for historians - specialists in this field.

Baron Pavel Lvovich Schilling, who had been head of lithography at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1817, and a member of the digital committee since its formation in 1823, worked in the digital department, where ciphers were compiled. The Privy Councilor Trefurt was in charge of the department. In 1828, Schilling took over as head of this secret department.

P. L. Schilling entered the history of cryptography primarily as the inventor of ciphers of the so-called bigram type. He invented such a cipher while working in the cipher department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, even before his appointment as its head, and documentary information about this event is available in the file of the 1st expedition for 1823. Nesselrode's order to the cipher committee of March 22 to consider the cipher proposed by P. L. Schilling has been preserved. , as well as the report of the members of the Nesselrode digital committee on this matter dated June 14.

The bigram cipher dictionary consists of two-digit letter combinations (French language), code designations are two-, three- or four-digit numbers, “taken twice each for the variable transmission of letter bigrams by one or another number.” Outwardly, the digram cipher was a type-setting table pasted on a calico, in which there was a mandatory instruction for using the cipher. The letter combinations of the dictionary of such a cipher could be Russian or French, there could also be double Russian-French dictionaries. Correspondence using the bigram cipher, invented by P. L. Schilling, was carried out on French and the bigrams (double combinations of letters and punctuation marks) of the French alphabet were encrypted. The type of cipher is a simple replacement, mostly for 992 characters (992=32x31) with blanks. It is important to note that it was not consecutive digrams of the plain text that were encrypted, but letters (and signs) located on the length T of the period of the banner on which the transmitted message was signed. Bigrams, therefore, were composed "vertically" of two lines

transparency: the first letter is from the first line, the second is from the second. If at the end of the message there were not enough signs of the second line to form a bigram, then the missing part of the second line was filled in arbitrarily and already separate signs were encrypted.

The probabilistic characteristics of the cipher signs of this simple substitution, of course, do not obey the uniform law. The probability of the appearance of each cipher sign is determined by the product of the probabilities of the appearance of the corresponding signs of the digram plaintext. Chain dependencies here, such as Markov chains for language characters located at a distance of 20-25 characters from each other, as is known, are practically absent. However, these probabilities are not as "rare" as, say, if "horizontal" digrams composed of adjacent plaintext characters were encrypted. This reduced rarity or, as they say, "diagrammaticity" of the ciphertext makes it difficult to decipher messages closed by such a cipher, although, naturally, with modern positions this cipher cannot be considered cryptographically secure.

The deadline for the validity of each of these ciphers was determined by the Digital Committee at six years, if during this period the cipher is not compromised. Later (1858) this limit was reduced to three years. As will be seen from the following, this rule was often violated, which could not but affect the secrecy of correspondence.

We know some bigram keys of Baron P. L. Schilling. There is information about them in the “Inventory of Numbers” compiled by Trefurt, where, along with data on other figures compiled since the formation of the Numbers Committee, it is indicated that “August 13, 1823 from a member of this Committee, Mr. [etnik] Bar[on] Schilling von Kansch[tadt] received his works bigram key No. 1 and No. 2, No. 3 in French, as well as a package with papers related to the compilation of these figures.

In February 1824, copy No. 1 of Schilling's bigram cipher was sent to Tsarevich Konstantin Pavlovich; in January 1826, the same first, as well as the second, copies were given to Prince Menshikov when he was sent to Persia; in 1828, Count K. W. Nesselrode received the third copy of this cipher when sent to America.

In 1826, Schilling compiled a number for Admiral Sinyavin. In 1827, this copy of the cipher was handed over to K. V. Nesselrode, in the same year three more copies of this cipher were sent to a mission in Washington.

In the same year, P. L. Schilling compiled a “general cipher” under No. 16, particular numerals No. 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10, as well as a “military cipher” in Russian No. 28.

In the lithography, which Schilling organized and which was in charge of all the years of service in the ministry, work was carried out on reproduction and copying government documents. From the time of Schilling's activity, the custom of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs came into practice every day to provide the minister with lithographed copies of perlusted documents and letters for viewing, most of which, of course, in deciphered form, were also sent to the sovereign for review. Materials of perusal and decryption of correspondence were a common topic of discussion at meetings of the Digital Committee.

P. L. Schilling treated the lithographers with great care, considering the importance of their work. Before us is one of the reports to his Vice-Chancellor Nesselrode, the text of which reads: “The lithographic students Efimov, Paltsev and Grigoriev, with good behavior, diligently correcting their positions, and the first of them, moreover, and showing art in printing against their comrades, deserve the attention of their superiors, why I make it my duty to ask Your Excellency to reward him, the first rank of non-commissioned officer and 75 rubles, and the last two 50 rubles each, as well as the bookbinder Pazov, who was engaged in the sticker of digital tables, 100 rubles.

Before studying the history of a particular type of state activity, the question inevitably arises of identifying the attitude of the state itself to this type of activity at one stage or another. The most important aspect of this problem is the awareness by the state (subjects personifying it) of the need for a correct assessment of this type of activity for the “normal”, taking into account known criteria, functioning of the state system. The right policy in this area, thoughtful and timely incentives can prevent the consequences that will lead to the failure of the entire system. Naturally, we are primarily interested in the attitude of the first persons Russian state to cryptographic service in various historical eras.

The importance of the cryptographic service in ensuring the successful functioning of the state was well understood, and this we tried to show the reader, throughout the 18th century. In the Petrine era, when this service was just being created, it was taking on a general outline, the experience of participation in its formation of the highest state officials, including the emperor himself, testified to the state's awareness of the interest in its successful functioning. This interest was clearly manifested in the Elizabethan and Catherine eras, when the formation of such a branch of cryptographic activity as a decryption service took place.

The success of European cryptography required Russian specialists continuous improvement of working methods, persistent theoretical searches. The state was aware of the need for such activities and encouraged it in every possible way. How and in what form the promotion was carried out can be found, for example, from a letter from Count K. V. Nesselrode to P. L. Schilling dated March 23, 1830:

"To Baron Schilling von Kanstadt

from Count Nesselrode.

Secret

My [merciful] Mr [sovereign]!

The Sovereign Emperor, as a reward for Your Excellency’s special work for the benefit of the service in compiling and manufacturing new numbers, most graciously welcome you deigned 1,000 Dutch chervons, the highest ordered that you be given this amount without any deduction from the state treasury.

Collegiate adviser Nesterovich and Ivanov, who took part in this case under your leadership, were each granted 2,000 rubles in banknotes on the same basis; court counselor Gesler was awarded the badges of the Order of St. Anne, 2nd class, adorned with the imperial crown; titular advisers Gass and Bykov received the following ranks, and titular adviser Rakhonin was granted a diamond ring of 1000 rubles.

I set myself a special pleasure to notify you, my Gracious G[sire], of such royal attention to your marked merits and to the diligent service of the officials who are with you, I humbly ask Your Excellency to announce to them the awards granted to them ".

The government also treated Schilling's scientific work with great respect and attention, trying to direct it in a direction that would be most useful for Russia. Another document is indicative in this regard, namely, a letter from the same Nesselrode to Schilling dated May 5, 1835. During this period, Pavel Lvovich became seriously ill and was about to go to European resorts for treatment. Traveling abroad for a long time for such an important official as Baron Schilling required the permission of the sovereign. In this regard, Nesselrode writes:

“Gracious Sovereign, Baron Pavel Lvovich!

Owing to the most humble report, by which I requested highest resolution about allowing Your Excellency to go abroad to correct your disordered health with mineral waters, the Sovereign Emperor was pleased to express his most merciful permission and, at the same time, with the permission of His Majesty, in order to make your stay in foreign lands useful for service, you are instructed to deal with the following subjects, policy, then circumstances allow you to:

1) Familiarize yourself with new discoveries made in recent years in Germany, France and England in the science of electromagnetism and in the methods of composing artificial magnets, from which very important applications in mechanics can be expected.

2) Find the advantages and disadvantages of telegraphic systems in Prussia, France and England.

3) Learn in full the newly invented method of Dr. Reichenbach to char up to 80 cubic meters. a sazhen of firewood around in specially arranged ovens for this, and finally,

4) to be present in Bonn at the meeting of naturalists, which has to be there in the month of September.

Recognizing the usefulness of the above information and assuring that you, dear sir, will use every effort to acquire it for distribution in our fatherland, the Sovereign Emperor most mercifully deigned to keep you, as an official, and abroad having to deal with the affairs of the service, the salary due to you ...

Nesselrode.

We present the full text of this very informative document, because, on the one hand, it confirms the government’s concern for the health and well-being of a responsible employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - scientist, cryptographer, engineer P. L. Schilling von Kanstadt, and on the other hand, shows how active Russian government in the first half of the nineteenth century. sought to use the achievements of world scientific and technical thought for the benefit of the prosperity of our Fatherland. We would especially like to draw the reader's attention to the positive role played in this process by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Count K. W. Nesselrode and the cryptographer Baron P. L. Schilling.