Dear nighthawk2123-ga;
Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to answer your interesting.
The answer is surprisingly complicated, as you will see in a moment:
The first electric chair used for execution is often incorrectly
attributed to Mr. Edwin Davis, who supposedly designed the chair (and
did apply for patents to its various ?parts? of the one he used) that
was FIRST USED to execute a prisoner by the name of William Kemmler on
August 6, 1890 at Auburn Prison New York. Davis? chair, while not the
first of its kind, is considered by some to be the first electric
chair since it was the first one that was actually used to execute
prisoners, albeit based on earlier concepts.
Wikipedia offers this about how the electric chair came into being:
?The first practical electric chair was invented by Harold P. Brown.
Brown was an employee of Thomas Edison's hired for the purpose of
researching electrocution and for the development of the electric
chair. Since Brown worked for Edison, and Edison promoted Brown's
work, the development of the electric chair is often erroneously
credited to Edison himself. Brown's design was based on Alternating
current (AC), which was then just emerging as the rival to Edison's
less efficient direct current (DC), which was further along in
commercial development.?
WIKIPEDIA ? ELECTRIC CHAIR
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_chair
This is true ? sort of?for as you will see, there is much more to the story:
The matter of who holds the patent on the electrified chair is a
complicated one. The most accurate way to answer it is to answer the
question, ?What is the patent number to the electrifying MECHANISM
that turned the first chair into an electric chair?? After all, until
the first functional electricity generating mechanism was applied, the
chair was merely a piece of furniture, wasn?t it? ?and who knows who
invented the chair, right?
It seems that a fellow named Nikola Tesla, a one-time colleague of
Thomas Edison, tried unsuccessfully to convince Edison that AC current
was an emerging technology that should be researched for practical
application. Edison saw great personal dangers to those who tinkered
with the yet-to-be utilized energy of AC power and nixed Teslas?
notions as reckless and absurd. That?s where the two parted company
and Tesla went on to work on his inventions and later sold his patents
for the ?polyphase alternating-current dynamo? (the first AC
generator) and others to Westinghouse, Edison?s chief competitor, for
$60,000, which included $5,000 in cash and 150 shares of stock in the
Westinghouse Corporation.
This move infuriated Edison and the two men became bitter rivals. As
Tesla gained more and more attention with his now patented portable AC
generator, the ?Dynamo Electric Machine? Edison obsessed on new ways
of discrediting his adversaries? theories and subsequently launched a
smear campaign against Westinghouse and AC current technology. In 1888
Edison even went so far as to employ a specialist in the field, Harold
P. Brown, to research methods of showing that AC current would kill
people much more readily than his own DC current inventions, which he
claimed were safer for human use. Brown built a chair and attached
Tesla?s (now Westinghouse?s) AC generator to it (without authority) to
show in public exhibition that it would kill small animals ? ?just
imagine what it would do to a human? was the supposed point.
Ironically, a New York dentist, Alfred Southwick, had been lobbying
the State of New York to consider using electricity as a means of
humanely executing condemned prisoners and described in great detail
how he?d gotten the idea after witnessing an unfortunate hobo get
swiftly and painlessly killed by electricity. On June 4, 1888, the New
York Legislature passed a law establishing electrocution as the
state's method of execution but since there were now two electrical
options (AC and DC) a committee was formed to decide which form of
electricity would be used in the execution of prisoners. Now Edison
had to try and protect his beloved DC current concepts, and used his
influence to lobby the committee to select the Westinghouse device
(AC) to be used for this purpose rather than his own. His strategy was
to persuade the public that AC was far too deadly for household use,
in hopes of scaring the public into supporting the use of his own DC
operated inventions and the public sizzling of small cats and dogs
graduated to the more dramatic electrical slaughter of larger cattle
and horses in order to maximize the effect (it is even said ?
unconfirmed - that an elephant was destroyed this way once too).
The tactic backfired on Edison and the Westinghouse device was seen as
a highly efficient killing machine and a much cleaner and humane way
to dispose of condemned prisoners than the outdated and quite nasty
method of hanging. The term ?electrocute? and ?execution? were
combined then to give birth to a new word, ?electrocution? in spite of
Edison?s attempts to further discredit his rival by publicly coining
the phrase ?Westinghoused? to describe an execution (it didn?t catch
on). In time, as interest in the device grew larger, the committee
decided on the Westinghouse AC chair and it was officially adopted as
a means of executing condemned prisoners.
On January 1, 1889, the world's first electrical execution law went
into full effect. Westinghouse balked and objected to its technology
being used to execute prisoner. Edison seized the opportunity and
began supplying the prison system with AC generators against the
protest of Westinghouse. The conflict became so bitter that
Westinghouse even funded the defense of several of the first condemned
prisoners in order to keep its technology from being put to this use,
but Edison himself testified in court that the AC current was the most
efficient and deadly means of dispatching the men. Eventually,
Westinghouse gave up, Edison won out and one by one mean marched to
their deaths.
The rest as they say is history.
So, in order to know the patent number of the first electric chair
we?d have to know when and by whom the first chair was REALLY
invented. Who invented the electric chair? Regardless of who the
widely disputed inventor of the electric chair actually was, Tesla?s
patent for his AC generator, known as the ?Dynamo Electric Machine?,
was ultimately responsible for transforming a simply built wooden
chair into the first ?electric chair?.
The patent for Nikola Tesla?s ?Dynamo Electric Machine? which supplied
the lethal current to the first electric chair built by Harold P.
Brown and erroneously credited to a number of people, including Thomas
Edison himself, is: US Patent # US390721 (October 9, 1888)
There were other Dynamo?s patented by Tesla but this was the most
recent one at the time of Harold P Brown?s ?electric chair?, which, by
the way, Brown did NOT and could not have legally obtained a patent
for himself, since the mechanism was already patented. This is most
likely the reason why such a patent on an 1880?s or 1890?s model
electric chair is impossible to find.
NIKOLA TESLA US PATENT # 390,721
DYNAMO ELECTRIC MACHINE
OCTOBER 9 1888
http://www.svensons.com/Tesla/US000390721.html
NIKOLA TESLA'S U.S. PATENTS - THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
http://www.svensons.com/Tesla/
WIKIPEDIA ? TESLA PATENTS
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_patents
(See items 18-21)
Many sources can be found to confirm that Tesla?s invention actually
enabled the electric chair, which was otherwise no different from any
other chair were it nor for the mechanism Tesla first invented:
?Tesla proselytized A.C. power and had some success building A.C.
power plants, and providing A.C. power to various entities. One of
these was Sing Sing prison, in upstate New York. Tesla provided A.C.
power for the "electric chair" there. Edison had big articles printed
in the New York newspapers, saying that A.C. power was dangerous
"killing" power, and in general, gave a bad name to Tesla.?
NIKOLA TESLA: HUMANITARIAN GENIUS
http://www.sumeria.net/tech/tesla.html
?One of the dirty tricks employed by Edison was the use of the Tesla /
Westinghouse AC system to power an invention he was developing on
behalf of (and later accepted by) the US Government, the Electric
Chair.?
THE MAN WHO MADE LIGHTENING
http://www.thelosthaven.co.uk/NikolaTesla.htm
?Yes, it was Thomas Edison who invented the electric chair to frighten
people away from the use of Tesla's AC system of electricity.?
NIKOLA TESLA ? FORGOTTEN AMERICAN SCIENTIST
http://www.concentric.net/~Jwwagner/ntes-p6.html
DRAWING: http://www.concentric.net/~Jwwagner/kemlr.gif
?In 1890 the company went so far as to license, through an agent, the
Westinghouse system in order to power a death contraption which they
called an "electric chair." THE COMPLETE PATENTS OF NIKOLA TESLA
http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/new/tesla.htm
(note that it doesn?t say it was ?patented? by GE (aka, Edision), but ?licensed?)
I hope you find that my research exceeds your expectations. If you
have any questions about my research please post a clarification
request prior to rating the answer. Otherwise I welcome your rating
and your final comments and I look forward to working with you again
in the near future. Thank you for bringing your question to us.
Best regards;
Tutuzdad-ga ? Google Answers Researcher
INFORMATION SOURCES
WORLDNET DAILY
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=15423
GADLAW.COM
http://members.tripod.com/~gadbuddhaa/theelectricchair.htm
SCIENCE DAILY
?WAR OF CURRENTS?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/War_of_Currents
WIKIPEDIA ? TESLA PATENTS
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_patents
YAHOO! GROUPS FACTOID
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linknfactoid/message/142
DEATH AND MONEY
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa102497.htm
COOLQUIZ
http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/edison.asp
FULL CIRCUIT
http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/sept00/features/full/full.html
THE UNMUSEUM
http://www.unmuseum.org/tesla.htm
SEARCH STRATEGY
SEARCH ENGINE USED:
Google ://www.google.com
SEARCH TERMS USED:
PATENT, ELECTRIC CHAIR, INVENTOR, US PATENT OFFICE, EDISION, TESLA,
INVENTOR, INVENTED |
