Carl Louis Schwendler

Carl Louis Schwendler (1838 - 1882) was a German electrician and one of the first proponents of the Tungsten based incandescent light bulb. He also published an influential textbook on telegraphs, and worked in British India at a senior post in the Telegraph Department. He was involved in setting up telegraphic communication between Agra and Calcutta[1] solving problems in transmission of submerged cables.[2] He was commissioned by the Railways to perform a feasibility study of lighting Indian Railway stations by electric lamp.

Memorial to Carl Schwendler at the Alipore Zoological Gardens

Schwendler was a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 1867 a zoo was proposed by Joseph Fayrer and the idea was again raised by Schwendler in 1873.[3] He helped in the setting up of this garden and offered his small menagerie (prior to his leaving India) to create the nucleus of the Alipore Zoological Gardens in Kolkata.[4] This zoo became in 1875 the home of Robert Clive's tortoise, Adwaita, thought to be the longest-living animal in the world when he died in 2006 at an estimated of age 255.[5] A memorial to Schwendler was erected at the zoo premises in 1883.[6]