He left an enormous quantity of computational works; apparently, he wanted to derive general laws from the massive volume of observations.

From each year of his administration, bound notebooks survived titled Berichte des Smotritels (Supervisors’ Accounts) and Tagebuch (Diary).

Browsing through Berichte des Smotritels, I noticed Wild’s comment, “See correspondence with the state controller.” It turned out that on the occasion of a severe winter, stored firewood was not sufficient, and the supervisor asked permission to buy firewood out of the amount marked for another paragraph in the budget.

Being in the Russian Civil Service with the rank of a privy councilor and the title of academician, the Swiss citizen Heinrich Wild wrote a letter to the Swiss ambassador, asking for protection from the cavils of the State Control and an insult (offense) to his dignity by the imposition of a fine (amende) on him.

Most surprising, the State Control sent a letter of apology in French through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying that the recovery (pénalité) was not a fine (amende), was imposed by unfortunate misunderstanding, and was removed."

He invented the polaristrobometer—a form of saccharimeter—a polarization photometer, a magnetic theodolite, and various new optical methods for comparing measures of length.