Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: our Heart Radio and I love all things tech. Once again,
Speaker 1: I have to to couch my loving of all things
Speaker 1: tech because today's topic is a dark one that I
Speaker 1: do not love. It's the electric chair, the method of
Speaker 1: execution that has a history dating back more than a century.
Speaker 1: This is a particularly grim and grizzly topic and there
Speaker 1: will be some discussion of pretty gruesome stuff in this episode,
Speaker 1: So if you are sensitive to such things, I gently
Speaker 1: suggest you stop listening now. I think this is an
Speaker 1: important topic, but I also love you guys, and I
Speaker 1: never want you to regret listening to one of my episodes.
Speaker 1: And I completely understand it if this really turns you
Speaker 1: off and you think I can't listen to it. But
Speaker 1: if you're fascinated by it and you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about the history of the electric chair and how
Speaker 1: it came to be, which has more to do with
Speaker 1: politics and social morays than it does with technology, keep listening.
Speaker 1: And before I dive into the history and talk about
Speaker 1: the development of the electric chair and what goes on
Speaker 1: with it. I wanted to address my own bias on
Speaker 1: this matter because I'm very much against the death penalty.
Speaker 1: I do not believe executions are effective as a deterrent
Speaker 1: in a best case scenario. In my view, each execution
Speaker 1: removes just one person from the possibility of ever doing
Speaker 1: direct harm to someone else. That's the best case scenario,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of bad scenarios. Executions in
Speaker 1: an electric chair or otherwise. They're expensive procedures, largely because
Speaker 1: of the legal processes that typically exist to make sure
Speaker 1: the execution is in fact approved and is the appropriate measure.
Speaker 1: And most importantly for me, there remains the possibility that
Speaker 1: the state could put someone to death who is innocent
Speaker 1: of any crimes it has happened before. Our desire for
Speaker 1: justice sometimes feeds bad decisions in which we need to
Speaker 1: have someone to pend the blame on, even if that
Speaker 1: someone isn't absolutely certain to be the one at fault.
Speaker 1: And that means even if you view capital punishment as
Speaker 1: being a just punishment, you could still end up with
Speaker 1: a case of state sponsored murder of an innocent person.
Speaker 1: And because of those reasons, I'm anti death penalty. However,
Speaker 1: I will do my best to cover this topic without
Speaker 1: too much personal commentary for them that bias. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to put it on the table right up front
Speaker 1: and be transparent about it. All right, let's get started.
Speaker 1: Although the word electrocution came into use specifically for the
Speaker 1: description of being put to death via the electric chair,
Speaker 1: since that time, we've used it to describe any death
Speaker 1: due to being exposed to an electric shock, and there
Speaker 1: were plenty of cases of injury and death from electricity
Speaker 1: before anyone thought of the electric chair. For one thing,
Speaker 1: lightning has been around longer than people have, so it
Speaker 1: stands to reason that there have been deaths in the
Speaker 1: past due to lightning strikes, either directly or indirectly, but
Speaker 1: we're not going to focus on those. That really isn't
Speaker 1: the realm of tech stuff. Now. While there was a
Speaker 1: lot of experimentation with electricity in the nineteenth century, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the late eighteen seventies that we get what
Speaker 1: might be the earliest electrocution due to an accidental exposure
Speaker 1: to electricity. Now, this is likely in part because much
Speaker 1: of the early work with electricity for many decades was
Speaker 1: with electrostatic generators. Now, these can discharge very high voltage sparks,
Speaker 1: but they tend to be of a low amperage, and
Speaker 1: without it being a high voltage and uh sufficient average,
Speaker 1: you're not going to cause death or serious injury to somebody. Now,
Speaker 1: if you listen to my previous episode about the basics
Speaker 1: of electricity, you will remember that while both voltage and
Speaker 1: amperage are important, most folks will say it's the amps
Speaker 1: that will get you. But I have a bit more
Speaker 1: to say about this. In a second, voltage is similar
Speaker 1: to water pressure, right, It's how hard the electricity is
Speaker 1: being pushed through a circuit, whereas amperage or current is
Speaker 1: similar to the amount of water flowing past a specific
Speaker 1: point within a given amount of time. It's the amount
Speaker 1: of charge going through. It doesn't take much current to
Speaker 1: pose a danger to humans. You can feel a shock
Speaker 1: of current of just ten milli amps, So a milla
Speaker 1: amp is one of an amp. So if you were
Speaker 1: to grab a wire with a current between ten and
Speaker 1: twenty mill amps running through it, of alternating current in particular,
Speaker 1: you'd find yourself unable to let go as your muscles
Speaker 1: seized up around that wire. The current would need to
Speaker 1: be broken for you to regain control. If you encountered
Speaker 1: between one hundred and two hundred milli amps, you're in
Speaker 1: the fatal zone. At that amperage, the electric current causes
Speaker 1: the heart to go into ventricular fibrillation, meaning the heart
Speaker 1: begins to spasm irregularly. You get a rapid, irregular heartbeat.
Speaker 1: Above two hundred million amps, you actually have a better
Speaker 1: chance of survival, though you could suffer some pretty nasty injuries,
Speaker 1: including burns and possibly image to internal organs. Why would
Speaker 1: you survive at a higher current then? Why is one
Speaker 1: to two hundred the deadly zone. Well above two hundred milliamps,
Speaker 1: your heart tends to seize up, just as your hand
Speaker 1: would have seized up around a wire with twenty amps
Speaker 1: running through it. Miller apps, I should say apps would
Speaker 1: be way too much, But Miller amps your hand would
Speaker 1: just seize up around it. Your heart would do the
Speaker 1: same and around above two hundred milli amps. Uh. This
Speaker 1: means that you would not go into ventricular fibrillation. Your
Speaker 1: heart would just stop. So if someone were to cut
Speaker 1: off the current that was running through you and then
Speaker 1: a minister resuscitation, you could recover, assuming you hadn't experienced
Speaker 1: significant damage to other organs like your small intestine or
Speaker 1: more uncommon, but it is possible something like your liver.
Speaker 1: So does that mean voltage is not important at all? Well, no,
Speaker 1: that's not true either. You also remember from that previous
Speaker 1: episode that I talked about the concepts conductivity and resistance.
Speaker 1: This describes the ease or the difficulty if you if
Speaker 1: you prefer at which current can pass through a given substance.
Speaker 1: So something that has got a high conductivity facilitates the
Speaker 1: movement of electricity through that substance, something with high resistance doesn't. So,
Speaker 1: assuming your skin is dry, your body's electrical resistance is
Speaker 1: relatively high, which means there needs to be a sufficient
Speaker 1: amount of voltage. You need to have a sufficient amount
Speaker 1: of pressure to get the current to run through the
Speaker 1: human body. Higher voltages have that pressure. So it's really
Speaker 1: the combination of the proper voltage and current that leads
Speaker 1: to a case of electrocution. Okay, so back to historical accounts.
Speaker 1: One of the earliest types of electrical lights used ever
Speaker 1: in the history of humans was the arc lamp. Now,
Speaker 1: these preceded the incandescent bulbs that were made famous by,
Speaker 1: but not invented by Thomas Edison's labs. In fact, they
Speaker 1: preceded it by decades. They were first developed in the
Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds. However, it wasn't until the eighteen seventies
Speaker 1: and the evolution of direct current dynamos that these arc
Speaker 1: lamps became a practical technology for widespread use. The arc
Speaker 1: lamp worked on a different principle from incandescent lamps. Actually,
Speaker 1: I should just say works, because there are still arc
Speaker 1: lamps in use today for very specific applications. So incandescent
Speaker 1: bulbs work by running a current through a very thin
Speaker 1: wire and the thin wire heats up and it gives
Speaker 1: off light. It literally it incandescence. The arc lamp generates
Speaker 1: light in a different way. It creates a sustained spark
Speaker 1: or arc between two carbon rods that are spaced apart
Speaker 1: at a particular distance. Other materials besides carbon can be used,
Speaker 1: but the early arc lamps were carbon arc lamps. The
Speaker 1: gap between the rods is important. If the gap is
Speaker 1: too wide, then the spark or the arc won't be
Speaker 1: able to sustain itself. It would fire off and starts
Speaker 1: and stops, so you would get a flickering light and
Speaker 1: sort of a sputtering noise that would come along with it.
Speaker 1: If the rods are too close to each other, then
Speaker 1: you would get a sustained spark, but you would get
Speaker 1: a limited amount of light. You want to maximize the
Speaker 1: light you get while minimizing the chance of the lamps sputtering.
Speaker 1: So what's actually going on with these arc lamps. Well,
Speaker 1: it gets a bit technical, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: take too much time away from the actual focus of
Speaker 1: this episode, but I'll give a very quick overview. The
Speaker 1: rods act as electrodes and a voltage is applied between them. Now,
Speaker 1: remember a voltage is a difference in electric potential between
Speaker 1: two points. These two rods are then brought into contact
Speaker 1: with one another. Typically they're inside a lamp bulb structure
Speaker 1: that actually has air in it, so it's not a
Speaker 1: vacuum bulb like an incandescent bulb would be, and this
Speaker 1: causes current to flow between the two rods. Some of
Speaker 1: the carbon atoms in the rods ionize, they become charged particles,
Speaker 1: and some of these ionized carbon atoms vaporize off of
Speaker 1: the tips of the rods. So you get this ionized
Speaker 1: carbon vapor between the two rods and the vapor can
Speaker 1: conduct electricity very much like a wire would, So an
Speaker 1: electric current can flow from one electrode to another through
Speaker 1: the air due to this carbon vapor, and you get
Speaker 1: a very bright light as a result. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was so bright that the lamps became popular for very
Speaker 1: specific applications such as lighting up streets at night, rather
Speaker 1: than using gas lamps. They were also used in theatrical
Speaker 1: lighting for stages, and this leads us to the first
Speaker 1: recorded case of a electrocution that I could discover. The
Speaker 1: account is in a report titled Injury Mechanisms and Therapeutic
Speaker 1: Advances in the Study of Electrical Shock that was written
Speaker 1: by two members of the faculty at the University of Chicago.
Speaker 1: In their report, they mentioned that the earliest recorded case
Speaker 1: of artificial electrocution as opposed to electrocution by lightning, happened
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy nine. A carpenter working at a theater
Speaker 1: touched a wire connected to a two hundred fifty voult generator,
Speaker 1: producing alternating current. Now, considering that work in electricity had
Speaker 1: been going on for decades before that tragedy, I suspect
Speaker 1: there may have been other cases, but this is the
Speaker 1: earliest documented one that I could find. Arc lighting began
Speaker 1: to replace gas lamps in many cities. It provided brighter light,
Speaker 1: and it was also less expensive to operate than gas lamps,
Speaker 1: which also depended upon stuff like oil from whales, and
Speaker 1: that whales were being hunted to near extinction. So the
Speaker 1: switch to electricity, pun intended, would mean whale hunting began
Speaker 1: to decline and while populations began to recover. But it
Speaker 1: also paved the way for more accidents with humans, of
Speaker 1: which there were more than a few. The people who
Speaker 1: died from electrocution appeared to do so nearly instantaneously, and
Speaker 1: frequently they had no external signs of damage. And this
Speaker 1: brings us up to eighteen eighty one in Buffalo, New
Speaker 1: York and a man named Alfred P. Southwick d D
Speaker 1: s yep. The story of the electric chair hinges upon
Speaker 1: a dentist. And I could make a lot of jokes
Speaker 1: about dentists here, including referencing the film and stage play
Speaker 1: of Little Shop of Horrors, but those are easy jokes,
Speaker 1: so I'll just acknowledge it and move on. Southwick witnessed
Speaker 1: an accident in eighty one that led him to consider
Speaker 1: the possibility of electrocution as a means to carry out
Speaker 1: capital punish ment. He witnessed a man who was deep
Speaker 1: in his cups that means he was drunk, and that
Speaker 1: man touched a live generator terminal. He suffered a fatal
Speaker 1: shock as a result. Now, Southwick's perception was that the
Speaker 1: death was swift and apparently painless. Now, at the time,
Speaker 1: the typical method of carrying out capital punishment in the
Speaker 1: United States was hanging. The nineteenth century had seen some
Speaker 1: pretty dramatic changes in the US when it came to
Speaker 1: capital punishment until the middle of the nineteenth century, so
Speaker 1: the eighteen forties and fifties, public hangings were common, and
Speaker 1: there was a long list of crimes for which capital
Speaker 1: punishment could be brought to bear, and in many cases
Speaker 1: it was a mandatory sentence. Now, these were holdovers from
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, but there was a
Speaker 1: growing concern about the ethics of the death penalty and
Speaker 1: the effects it could have on a crowd. There had
Speaker 1: actually been pets at a few of these public hangings,
Speaker 1: and that meant that many states had either moved to
Speaker 1: private hangings out of the public view, or they were
Speaker 1: abolishing the death penalty outright. Another perspective was that such
Speaker 1: widespread application of the death penalty was acting as a
Speaker 1: deterrent for juries to deliver a guilty verdict on a suspect.
Speaker 1: Juries were aware that if they gave a guilty verdict,
Speaker 1: the sentence would lead to an execution. Therefore, many people
Speaker 1: on a jury were reluctant to deliver a guilty verdict.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to be responsible for the death of
Speaker 1: another person. So there were some people who wanted to
Speaker 1: abolish the death penalty, not because they thought it was
Speaker 1: inhumane or it was wrong, but because they felt that
Speaker 1: guilty people were being set free because Juries were too
Speaker 1: squeamish to condemn someone to death. So they said, well,
Speaker 1: we should get rid of the death penalty so we
Speaker 1: can lock these people up, because right now the options
Speaker 1: are a mandatory death sentence or are letting them go free.
Speaker 1: And then there was the curious case of John Babbacomb Lee,
Speaker 1: a man accused of having murdered a woman by the
Speaker 1: name of Emma Keys. Now, despite Lee's proclamations of innocence
Speaker 1: and a lack of really compelling evidence, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that directly tied lead
Speaker 1: to the murder. Lee was actually convicted of the crime
Speaker 1: and he was sentenced to hang. But things did not
Speaker 1: work out quite as planned. When it came time to
Speaker 1: drop the trap door out from underneath Lee's feet, the
Speaker 1: door remained in place and Lee did not budge. The executioner,
Speaker 1: James Berry, reset the scaffold and attempted to hang Lee
Speaker 1: three times. All three times the mechanism failed. The experience
Speaker 1: must have been a pretty dramatic one. Lee's sentence was
Speaker 1: then commuted to life imprisonment. He would eventually be released later.
Speaker 1: It appeared as though the scaffold had a misaligned bar
Speaker 1: that was blocking the trap door, and then this probably
Speaker 1: happened when it had been relocated from a different spot
Speaker 1: not long before the scheduled execution. I can only imagine
Speaker 1: what Lee must have gone through to believe, not once,
Speaker 1: but three times his life was about to end, only
Speaker 1: for nothing to happen. The psychological toll was another cruelty
Speaker 1: cited by critics. Now, it doesn't take much imagination to
Speaker 1: summon up how barbaric a hanging can be, particularly public hangings.
Speaker 1: In some cases, the hanged would live for up to
Speaker 1: half an hour before dying of asphyxiation. In other cases,
Speaker 1: if the drop were long enough, the force of the
Speaker 1: sudden stop coupled with the noose tightening could reportedly result
Speaker 1: in a decapitation. Southwick apparently believed in the death penalty,
Speaker 1: but also felt a more humane approach to ending a
Speaker 1: life was called for, and he was not alone in
Speaker 1: this belief. There were countless doctors, politicians, intellectuals, and others
Speaker 1: who shared his beliefs. He thought electrocution could be that approach.
Speaker 1: He consulted with a friend of his, doctor George E. Fell,
Speaker 1: and they began to look into the possibility of advocating
Speaker 1: for electrocution over hanging Southwick published his argument in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty three and began to write articles about electrocution, and
Speaker 1: they came to the attention of the Governor of New York,
Speaker 1: David Bennett Hill, who had taken over for an outgoing
Speaker 1: Grover Cleveland, who had recently been elected President of the
Speaker 1: United States. One of Hill's acquaintances was Daniel H. Macmillan,
Speaker 1: a friend to Southwick and a New York senator. Macmillan
Speaker 1: championed the death penalty, but the growing resistance from abolitionists
Speaker 1: who wanted to outlaw hanging posed a challenge. Macmillan saw
Speaker 1: Southwick's proposal as a possible way to sidestep that challenge.
Speaker 1: If the abolitionists were arguing that hanging was in humane,
Speaker 1: if it was cruel and violent, well how about a clean,
Speaker 1: painless method of putting someone to death. Macmillan saw electrocution
Speaker 1: as a possible way to preserve the death penalty and
Speaker 1: overstep these objections. When we come back, I'll continue the
Speaker 1: journey to the creation of Old Sparky, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. So Southwick's work inspired a New
Speaker 1: York senator named McMillan to advocate for electrocution as an
Speaker 1: alternative to hanging, thus preserving the death penalty in the
Speaker 1: state of New York. David Bennett Hill, the Governor of
Speaker 1: New York, listen to McMillan's arguments, using Southwick's published works
Speaker 1: as citations, and he became convinced that it was a
Speaker 1: suitable alternative to hanging. In fact, he even made it
Speaker 1: part of his eight State of the State speech, stating
Speaker 1: the present mode of executing criminals by hanging hiss down
Speaker 1: to us from the dark ages and it may well
Speaker 1: be questioned whether the science of the present day cannot
Speaker 1: provide a means for taking the life of such as
Speaker 1: are condemned to die in a less barbarous manner. I
Speaker 1: commend this suggestion to the consideration of the legislature. He
Speaker 1: did not specifically bring up electrocution, but the implication was
Speaker 1: pretty clear. Now this plays into a common belief in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution and the rise of
Speaker 1: electricity brought with it an expectation that technological advancements were
Speaker 1: going to improve absolutely everything about our lives. Technology would
Speaker 1: provide a superior way to do all the tasks that
Speaker 1: previously had to be done through manual labor. So if
Speaker 1: technology could revolutionize manufacturing, why not executions. Macmillan and Hill
Speaker 1: were unable to push legislation through in eive to support
Speaker 1: electrocution as a new means to carry out death sentences. Instead,
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty six, Macmillan introduce a resolution to form
Speaker 1: a committee that would explore alternatives to hanging, with the
Speaker 1: goal of finding the most humane method to carry out
Speaker 1: a death sentence. Macmillan named Southwick one of the members
Speaker 1: of this committee, Knowing that Southwick was a fervent supporter
Speaker 1: of electrocution. The other two members, Matthew Hale and Elbridge T. Jerry,
Speaker 1: were from wealthy families, so is Southwick for that matter,
Speaker 1: and they had no firm stance on the matter. Southwick
Speaker 1: was relied upon as the voice of science and medicine,
Speaker 1: though he was a dentist and only an amateur electrician.
Speaker 1: The fact the commission didn't include a medical doctor or
Speaker 1: an experienced electrician would mean that defending their stance would
Speaker 1: become difficult. It also indirectly led to some of the
Speaker 1: more horrific displays of electricity. Now this brings our story
Speaker 1: in line with something else that was unfolding around the
Speaker 1: same time, the so called War of the Currents. There
Speaker 1: were two camps headed by two generals. On one side,
Speaker 1: you had Thomas Edison, heralded as a genius inventor and businessman,
Speaker 1: who advocated for direct current, which is the type of
Speaker 1: current supplied by stuff like batteries. On the other side,
Speaker 1: you had George Westinghouse, who was banking on alternating current,
Speaker 1: saying it provided a much better means to distribute electricity
Speaker 1: across longer distances. Now, I didn't include Nicola Tesla in
Speaker 1: this description because he was more like a lieutenant serving
Speaker 1: under Westinghouse, though he had originally worked as an employee
Speaker 1: over at one of Edison's companies before getting seriously shafted
Speaker 1: by Thomas Edison. The development of the electric chair and
Speaker 1: the War of the Currents are linked together, and both
Speaker 1: events were dependent upon leveraging public perceptions and making use
Speaker 1: of propaganda in an effort to win people over to
Speaker 1: a certain point of view. So this commission, which later
Speaker 1: some would refer to as the Charming Electrical Death Commission,
Speaker 1: produced an enormous report about the various means of execution
Speaker 1: that people had been using since Biblical times. It included
Speaker 1: not just methods like hanging and beheading, which was still
Speaker 1: a practice in France, but also being stoned to death,
Speaker 1: pressed by weights, burned alive at the stake, crucifixion, drawing
Speaker 1: and quartering, and more. The grizzly encyclopedia of ways humans
Speaker 1: have ended the lives of those condemned took up about
Speaker 1: half of the report's pages. The point was clear execution
Speaker 1: in its primitive forms was nearly always brutal and inhumane.
Speaker 1: Another section of the report was largely dedicated to the
Speaker 1: results of a survey the Commission sent out to various
Speaker 1: authorities and doctors, so lawyers, judges, police officials, et cetera.
Speaker 1: The survey just had five questions. The third question asked
Speaker 1: if there might be a more humane alternative to hanging
Speaker 1: and what that might be. The fourth question proposed four
Speaker 1: alternatives and asked for the views of those taking the
Speaker 1: survey on each of those alternatives. The four, in order
Speaker 1: were electricity, poison, the guillotine, and the garote. The survey
Speaker 1: excluded any suggestion that capital punshment should be abolished out right,
Speaker 1: a telling omission, because that was certainly something that could
Speaker 1: have been on the table, but was left out on purpose.
Speaker 1: Now I say that a large part of the report
Speaker 1: was dedicated to the results of this survey, but it
Speaker 1: was more like it was dedicated to cherry picked results
Speaker 1: from the survey. The full results showed that only a
Speaker 1: small number of those questioned preferred electricity to hanging for
Speaker 1: supported electricity and then said hanging is just fine. Seeing
Speaker 1: as how the Commission was being guided by an advocate
Speaker 1: for electrocution, it should come as no surprise that those
Speaker 1: results were not laid out in full. Instead, the report
Speaker 1: included choice quotes and tidbits from the survey. Some of
Speaker 1: those responding to the survey voice concerns that electrocution might
Speaker 1: cause harm to those carrying out the execution, a challenge
Speaker 1: that was not easily dismissed by the committee because there
Speaker 1: was just a lack of practical applications that they could
Speaker 1: point to to test that idea. So now let's switch circuits,
Speaker 1: so to speak to the War of the currents. Edison
Speaker 1: and Westinghouse were fiercely battling over the which standard, whether
Speaker 1: it was direct or alternating current, would become the accepted
Speaker 1: methodology for distributing power throughout the United States. Electric lights
Speaker 1: could run on either. Early appliances mostly ran on direct current,
Speaker 1: and direct current was pretty simple when you got down
Speaker 1: to it. But the big issue with direct current is
Speaker 1: that it would require very thick copper cables and a
Speaker 1: lot of voltage to push beyond a certain stans, and
Speaker 1: you quickly lost efficiency when you were trying to transmit
Speaker 1: power over distance. So it wasn't a huge issue if
Speaker 1: you located the power plant near the places where you
Speaker 1: were delivering electricity, also known as the load. So if
Speaker 1: the load was close to the power plant no problem.
Speaker 1: Direct currents fine, but it got more problematic when you
Speaker 1: wanted to send electricity to more remote locations. So it
Speaker 1: was the kind of thing that could work in dense
Speaker 1: populations if people didn't mind power plants right next door,
Speaker 1: but it would be harder to pull off outside of
Speaker 1: those dense environments. Alternating current could take advantage of stuff
Speaker 1: like transformers to step up or step down the voltage
Speaker 1: direct current can't. That meant that it could use those
Speaker 1: transformers to help distribute electricity over much greater distances from
Speaker 1: the point of production. So Westinghouse was arguing that a
Speaker 1: C was best, though it would also mean having to
Speaker 1: include converters for devices that would depend upon direct current,
Speaker 1: so those converters would take the coming a C and
Speaker 1: transform it into direct current for the appliance to use.
Speaker 1: Edison argued that alternating current was far more dangerous than
Speaker 1: direct current. He had also been contacted by a guy
Speaker 1: named Henry Berg Jr. And that was the founder of
Speaker 1: the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Speaker 1: or a s p c A. Now Berg had asked
Speaker 1: Edison if perhaps electrocution could be a more humane way
Speaker 1: to put down stray animals, essentially saying, there are too
Speaker 1: many strays, We're never going to find homes for all
Speaker 1: of them, so some of them will have to be
Speaker 1: put to death. What's the best way to do that
Speaker 1: that will cause the least amount of pain and suffering
Speaker 1: to animals? So you might ask, well, what were the alternatives? Well,
Speaker 1: they were mainly hanging and drowning. So yeah, we're terrible things,
Speaker 1: we humans, We've done awful things to poor little animals.
Speaker 1: Edison carried out several experiments electrocuting stray animals, and those
Speaker 1: experiments got the notice of the Commission in New York.
Speaker 1: Edison decided to spend this as sort of a propaganda
Speaker 1: attack on Alternating Current and Westinghouse. His demonstrations of electrocution
Speaker 1: used Alternating Current, with essentially the message being this version
Speaker 1: of electricity is inherently dangerous and will lead to fatalities,
Speaker 1: and yeah, this is all awful. I love animals, so
Speaker 1: I really hate this topic intensely. But I also wanted
Speaker 1: to take this opportunity to address a historical misrepresentation of
Speaker 1: Edison that gets lumped in with all this discussion usually,
Speaker 1: and that of course, is the famous electrocution of Topsy
Speaker 1: the elephant. Now, the basic story that gets passed around
Speaker 1: is that Edison ordered or oversaw the electrocution of this
Speaker 1: circus elephant, which had killed one handler after said handler
Speaker 1: had burned the elephant with a cigar, and that Edison
Speaker 1: did this in part as a way to demonstrate how
Speaker 1: dangerous alternating current is. But that story is both oversimplified
Speaker 1: and just playing wrong. First, Topsy wasn't put to death
Speaker 1: after killing a handler. She was actually kept around for
Speaker 1: a while after that incident happened. It was only after
Speaker 1: a different incident, when one of her other handlers got
Speaker 1: drunk and decided to ride the elephant through the streets
Speaker 1: of New York, that her reputation put the operations of
Speaker 1: her owners in jeopardy, and they didn't want their business
Speaker 1: interests to be ruined, so they chose to put her
Speaker 1: to death as almost like a publicity stunt. Initially, they
Speaker 1: planned to hang her, but the s p c A
Speaker 1: thought to have her electrocuted instead, believing that to be
Speaker 1: a more humane way to put an animal to death.
Speaker 1: This was done by people who worked for a company
Speaker 1: that bore Edison's name. It was an Edison company, but
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison himself didn't have any involvement with that company
Speaker 1: at that time. He had already left the company. Me Plus,
Speaker 1: this wasn't part of the War of the Currents because
Speaker 1: the War of the Currents had already been settled for
Speaker 1: a decade when Topsy was actually put to death in
Speaker 1: N three. So this gets conflated a lot. It did happen,
Speaker 1: but not the way it's typically said. This by the way,
Speaker 1: it was also several years after the first execution of
Speaker 1: a human by electrocution, So I'm gonna be backtracking in
Speaker 1: just a second. Anyway, Topsy's life makes for a very
Speaker 1: sad story, but it's not something we can lay at
Speaker 1: the feet of Thomas Edison himself in this case. Still,
Speaker 1: I don't want to exonerate Thomas Edison. He did put
Speaker 1: more than a few animals down using electrocution, so he
Speaker 1: did plenty of things that were not great, but this
Speaker 1: was not one of them. Now, when we come back,
Speaker 1: I'll talk more about the first electric chair and the
Speaker 1: first terrible execution, but first let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: The Electrical Death Commission used Edison's experiments as sort of
Speaker 1: a source of data to advocate for the use of
Speaker 1: electrocution and death penalty cases. The apparent lack of wounds
Speaker 1: on the animals and the swiftness of death seemed to
Speaker 1: fit the criteria the Commission was searching for and their
Speaker 1: efforts to establish electrocution as an alternative to hanging and
Speaker 1: to preserve the death penalty in general in the state
Speaker 1: of New York. The Commission presented their findings to the
Speaker 1: New York legislature, which was under intense pressure to make
Speaker 1: changes to the death penalty. Several states had already abolished
Speaker 1: the death penalty, but New York was not quite ready
Speaker 1: to make that step, and so the legislature took up
Speaker 1: debate on the subject in eight eight and ultimately came
Speaker 1: to an agreement. They passed an electrical execution law, and
Speaker 1: that law took effect on January one, eighteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: To Harold P. Brown, an electrical engineer and one of
Speaker 1: Edison's warriors in the War of the Currents, Brown had
Speaker 1: argued passionately against the adoption of alternating current He had
Speaker 1: stated that it was inherently deadly. He was brought on
Speaker 1: as a consultant to create a working manifestation of an
Speaker 1: electrocution device for the State of New York to test it,
Speaker 1: in other words, and to determine the best use of it.
Speaker 1: Southwick had previously suggested an electrical chair based in part
Speaker 1: on dentistry chairs. Remember Southwick was a dentist. Brown's job
Speaker 1: was to oversee more electrocution experiments with animals and determine
Speaker 1: the proper procedure current and voltage needed to put a
Speaker 1: person to death. Brown would rely upon alternating current despite
Speaker 1: there being no mandate from the state on what type
Speaker 1: of current should be used, and he experimented on animals,
Speaker 1: putting several to death. He determined that it would take
Speaker 1: between one thousand and fifteen hundred volts of alternating current
Speaker 1: to electrocute a person, and more pointedly, he mentioned that
Speaker 1: that represented only half of the voltage that was running
Speaker 1: through power lines at that very moment, So his implication
Speaker 1: was pretty clear, this is the electricity needed to kill someone,
Speaker 1: and you've got twice that running overhead in your typical
Speaker 1: power line. Brown was a master at passive aggressive criticism,
Speaker 1: not to mention outright aggressive criticism. Brown maintained that alternating
Speaker 1: current was inherently more dangerous than direct current. Allegedly he
Speaker 1: challenged Westinghouse himself to a current standoff in which Brown
Speaker 1: would hold a live wire that was running direct current
Speaker 1: into him, and Westinghouse would have to do the same
Speaker 1: with a wire running alternating current, and then they would
Speaker 1: just step up the voltage in equal steps until one
Speaker 1: of them let go. Westinghouse reportedly declined to acquiesce to
Speaker 1: his request, and to be fair to Brown, you can
Speaker 1: think of alternating current as being more day DRIs than
Speaker 1: direct current, in the sense that it takes less voltage
Speaker 1: for a C to cause harmed humans than it would
Speaker 1: with d C. Also, alternating current has an oscillation to it,
Speaker 1: as the current alternates right while changes direction that can
Speaker 1: more easily lead to ventricular fibrillation that uncontrolled spasming of
Speaker 1: the heart than if you had an encounter with direct current.
Speaker 1: But it's not really ideal to experience either, and a
Speaker 1: direct current of sufficient voltage can be just as deadly
Speaker 1: as alternating current. It just takes more of it, or
Speaker 1: more voltage, I guess I should say. Now. Brown's passionate
Speaker 1: arguments against alternating current and his involvement in the construction
Speaker 1: of the first electric chair often get slightly misconstrued to
Speaker 1: say Edison was involved in the creation of the electric
Speaker 1: chair itself, and he wasn't, at least not directly, but
Speaker 1: he carries that reputation with him as well. Also, just
Speaker 1: so you guys know, I am not a big fan
Speaker 1: of Thomas Edison. I think a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: he did was really shady, But I also don't believe
Speaker 1: in heaping on stuff that wasn't his fault on top
Speaker 1: of the stuff that probably was his fault. Now. Brown
Speaker 1: apparently indulged in some hanky panky over at Edison's company
Speaker 1: when it came to powering the first electric chair. Understandably,
Speaker 1: no power company was eager to have its name associated
Speaker 1: with a device meant to put someone to death, especially
Speaker 1: while they were simultaneously trying to market electricity to the
Speaker 1: general public. Brown apparently engaged in some clandestine shenanigans to
Speaker 1: get hold of some Westinghouse alternating current generators for the
Speaker 1: purposes of powering the first electric chair. Further letters reported
Speaker 1: to have belonged to Brown showed that he did that
Speaker 1: under the direction of Edison's company. So, and that's sense
Speaker 1: Edison did play a part in this, largely to disparage
Speaker 1: the reputation of his rival, which is gross. As for
Speaker 1: the design and production of the chair itself, that dubious
Speaker 1: honor largely went to Edwin R. Davis. He was an
Speaker 1: electrician in the employment of the Auburn Prison in New York.
Speaker 1: The chair was designed to restrain the prisoner. Two electrodes
Speaker 1: would make contact with the prisoner's skin. One was designed
Speaker 1: to rest against the top of the prisoner's shaved head,
Speaker 1: and the other would be positioned to make contact with
Speaker 1: the prisoner's back. Each electrode was a disc of metal
Speaker 1: mounted on a rubber pad, and each disc was also
Speaker 1: covered with a sponge soaked in brine. The first person
Speaker 1: to be executed via electric chair was William Francis Kemmler.
Speaker 1: Kimbler made his living selling vegetables in Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 1: He was a known drunkard. In eight he got into
Speaker 1: a vicious argument with his girlfriend or common law wife,
Speaker 1: Tilly Ziegler. He was intoxicated at the time. He then
Speaker 1: reportedly killed Tilly with a hatchet before walking over to
Speaker 1: a neighbor's house and confessing to the crime. He was
Speaker 1: arrested and convicted and sentenced to die. Now the path
Speaker 1: from sentencing to the electric chair was not a direct one,
Speaker 1: and that's because Westinghouse, discovering that his equipment would be
Speaker 1: used to power this electric chair, acted out quickly to
Speaker 1: try and prevent this from happening, and he was sort
Speaker 1: of behind a lawsuit that was brought against New York
Speaker 1: State claiming that electrocution would amount to cruel and unusual punishment,
Speaker 1: which is against the Constitution of the United States of America.
Speaker 1: The argument included statements that people aren't all the same,
Speaker 1: and what might be enough voltage and current to kill
Speaker 1: one person might prove insufficient for the next person, and
Speaker 1: without being assured that death would be swift and in theory, painless,
Speaker 1: this could amount to cruel an unusual punishment. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court ultimately weighed in on this issue, stating that there
Speaker 1: was no basis to establish elexecution as cruel and unusual,
Speaker 1: and the execution was to proceed. Even so, it took
Speaker 1: a long time for these legal disputes to settle down
Speaker 1: and for a date to be set for the execution.
Speaker 1: That date would end up being August six. On that day,
Speaker 1: jailer's shaved the top of Kidler's head so that the
Speaker 1: electrode could make contact with the skin. He was escorted
Speaker 1: to the execution room, where a group of twenty five
Speaker 1: witnesses were gathered, including fourteen doctors. Kimler sat in the
Speaker 1: chair and jailer's secured restraints around his arms, his legs,
Speaker 1: and his waist. The jailer's placed the electrode on Kimler's back,
Speaker 1: and they strapped the other one to the top of
Speaker 1: his head. They placed a black cloth over his head
Speaker 1: as well. The all renaming current generator began to charge up,
Speaker 1: now supposed to build up a charge of two thousand
Speaker 1: volts or a potential difference of two thousand volts, which
Speaker 1: would be well over the fifteen hundred volts that Brown
Speaker 1: had suggested, but according to reports, the shock was administered
Speaker 1: at only seven hundred volts for seventeen seconds, whereupon a
Speaker 1: physician signaled that Kimbler was dead. The executioner had when Davis,
Speaker 1: now known as the State Electrician, shut off power, and
Speaker 1: then witnesses said that Kimler made noises and was clearly breathing.
Speaker 1: It was a horrifying situation. Making matters worse was that
Speaker 1: the generator would need time to build up the voltage
Speaker 1: again to have another go, so it was revved up,
Speaker 1: building up to slightly more than one thousand volts when
Speaker 1: a second shock, this one lasting more than a minute,
Speaker 1: was sent through Kimbler. Afterward, the jailers discovered that the
Speaker 1: very dead Kimbler had suffered pretty nasty injuries. The electrode
Speaker 1: at his back had burnt through Kemmler's skin down to
Speaker 1: the spine. Witnesses reported that they had seen smoke coming
Speaker 1: from the body and head of Kimbler. A report described
Speaker 1: him as appearing to sweat blood as capillaries burst in
Speaker 1: his face. It definitely did not seem like the quick,
Speaker 1: painless method that Southwick had envisioned. A deputy corner for
Speaker 1: the State of New York had this to say about
Speaker 1: the ordeal quote, I would rather see ten hangings than
Speaker 1: one such execution as this. In fact, I never cared
Speaker 1: to witness such a scene again. It was fearful. No
Speaker 1: humane man could witness it without the keenest agony. I
Speaker 1: am not an electrician, but I have considerable insight into
Speaker 1: electrical matters. Electricity applied as it was today will never
Speaker 1: serve as an executioner. And yet it is my honest
Speaker 1: belief that things might have been a thousand times worse
Speaker 1: than they were, though it seems almost impossible that they
Speaker 1: could be today. The apparatus was defective to a standpoint
Speaker 1: that approached carelessness. Even had it been perfect, we cannot
Speaker 1: say now any better than we could a week or
Speaker 1: a year ago, that it would do its work as
Speaker 1: it should be done. I don't think that Kimler was
Speaker 1: dead when the current was applied the second time, but
Speaker 1: he was unconscious end quote. Now. Despite this gruesome display,
Speaker 1: New York would continue to employ electrocution as a method
Speaker 1: of execution. Several other states would follow suit. Over time,
Speaker 1: executioners developed more reliable practices when it comes to electrocutions,
Speaker 1: though there was no shortage of reports about botched executions
Speaker 1: and horrible outcomes. There are cases in which people have
Speaker 1: reported seeing the person in the chair bursting into flames.
Speaker 1: For example, it's really chilling, horrifying stuff. Notably, only two
Speaker 1: countries ever used the electric chair. One is the United States,
Speaker 1: the other is the Philippines. In the US, the electric
Speaker 1: chair today is used as an alternative method for execution
Speaker 1: in several states. The primary method is lethal injection, but
Speaker 1: the electric chair remains an option that inmates can choose
Speaker 1: if they prefer it. The most recent use of the
Speaker 1: electric chair as of this recording was August two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: in the execution of convicted murderer Stephen Michael West. The
Speaker 1: electric chair is really an American invention. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of lore and slang around it. It can be called
Speaker 1: the chair, or old Sparky, or the mercy seat. There's
Speaker 1: a great nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song titled
Speaker 1: the Mercy Seat. It could be called the hot seat.
Speaker 1: That's where that phrase comes from. Being electrocuted also has
Speaker 1: various slang terms associated, like ride the lightning. Since its invention,
Speaker 1: more than four thousand people have been put to death
Speaker 1: in the electric chair. The modern electric chair is a
Speaker 1: bit different from the one in electrodes tend to attach
Speaker 1: at the head the back of the leg now, not
Speaker 1: the spine, and we no longer have the antiquated generators
Speaker 1: that cause such a terrible problem with that first execution.
Speaker 1: But there's still been no shortage of awful stories about
Speaker 1: executions that did not go exactly as planned. Now I'm
Speaker 1: closing this episode out by stating there are fifty three
Speaker 1: countries in the world that still have the death penalty,
Speaker 1: and I hope the United States can take itself off
Speaker 1: that list at some point. But that wraps up this
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. As I said before, I know
Speaker 1: it's a grim topic, but one I think is pretty important.
Speaker 1: And it also really displays the dangers of working around electricity,
Speaker 1: that you really need to be careful around this stuff
Speaker 1: because it can be fatal and it has been plenty
Speaker 1: of times before. And if you guys have suggestions for
Speaker 1: a true episodes of tech Stuff, perhaps ones that aren't
Speaker 1: quite so grim, get in touch with me. Let me
Speaker 1: know the email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle of both of those is text Stuff hs W.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to visit our website that's tech Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. You're gonna find a link to the archive
Speaker 1: of every episode we've ever recorded. There are more than
Speaker 1: a thousand of them out there, so go check that out.
Speaker 1: You also find a link to our online store, where
Speaker 1: every purchase you make goes to help the show. We
Speaker 1: greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's how
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