Saturday, September 27, 2003
Electric cynicism
Few standards battles have been more intriguing than the one fought between Edison and Westinghouse (a/c and d/c current). The Economist is carrying a review of Mark Essig's Edison & the Electric Chair, which recounts a particularly morbid saga of this battle.
After surveying execution methods from the guillotine (too bloody) to morphine overdoses (too pleasant), a commission appointed by the New York state legislature recommended in 1888 the use of electrocution, which it promised would be “instantaneous and painless” and “devoid of all barbarism”. The man who had persuaded the commission of this was Thomas Edison, America's most famous inventor.
Edison's primary interest in recommending electrocution was to discredit his chief rival in the race to wire America, George Westinghouse. Edison's company used direct current. Westinghouse's firm used alternating current. Edison not only argued that electrocution would be the best new way to kill condemned prisoners, but that Westinghouse's alternating current would be better at it than his own direct current. In other words, his support for electrocution was a marketing ploy. Edison hoped that using alternating current for executions would indelibly associate it with death in the public mind, and give him an edge in the electricity market.
After surveying execution methods from the guillotine (too bloody) to morphine overdoses (too pleasant), a commission appointed by the New York state legislature recommended in 1888 the use of electrocution, which it promised would be “instantaneous and painless” and “devoid of all barbarism”. The man who had persuaded the commission of this was Thomas Edison, America's most famous inventor.
Edison's primary interest in recommending electrocution was to discredit his chief rival in the race to wire America, George Westinghouse. Edison's company used direct current. Westinghouse's firm used alternating current. Edison not only argued that electrocution would be the best new way to kill condemned prisoners, but that Westinghouse's alternating current would be better at it than his own direct current. In other words, his support for electrocution was a marketing ploy. Edison hoped that using alternating current for executions would indelibly associate it with death in the public mind, and give him an edge in the electricity market.
