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Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death

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It's a good thing Thomas Edison invented the electric bulb. I couldn't put Edison and the Electric Chair down, so it was well after dark by the time I finished.

Whether you're a fan of books about history, science, and/or technology; curious about Edison and his role in the invention and promotion of the electric chair; or just like to get involved in a great story, you've got to read this book.

Essig does far more than simply explain the contradiction between Edison the man opposed to the death penalty and Edison the expert witness in New York's hearings on adopting the electric chair as a method of execution. He goes much further than merely pointing out the business reasons underlying Edison's advocacy of the chair (reasons explained far less entertainingly in a couple of other books).

Essig makes real the fascinating people involved -- like William Kemmler, the first man to die by electrocution, and George Westinghouse, Edison's major rival in bringing electricity to American homes, not to mention Edison himself. He gives you just enough information about how electricity travels to our homes and the difference between AC (alternating current) and DC (direct current) to illuminate the story. And, while providing unflinching details about the science of killing, he also managed to make me laugh at loud with this disturbingly absurd episode in our country's continuing saga of government-sanctioned execution.

Two inventors and industrial giants grappled in commercial combat over primacy in the emerging electric power industry in the late 19th and early 20th century. They were Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. The strategic hill of the battle was whether direct current (Edison) or alternating current (Westinghouse) would prevail. Edison made the safer system, but Westinghouse made the more economical system, because alternating current could be transmitted over longer distances with fewer generating stations.

While the marketing battle raged, New York had the inspiration to move from execution by hanging to electrocution. Hanging was notoriously fallible (necks did not snap so the victim strangled slowly, or necks snapped too well, decapitating the victim). New York solicited the opinion of the foremost authority on electricity, Edison. Edison, an opponent of the death penalty, demurred at first. But the temptation to dramatically equate his enemy's system of electricity with death proved too strong. Yes, Edison said, electrocution is just the thing, and alternating current is the best method of electrocution.

So New York's electrical execution law passed, and the appeal progressed of the first victim of the electric chair. His attorney, W. Bourke Cockran, secretly paid by Westinghouse, argued that electrocution was cruel and unusual under the Constitution, and so could not be imposed. Expert witness and secret Edison shill Harold Brown disagreed. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

This book tells the story of how a convicted murderer, William Kemmler, became a pawn in a battle between electrical titans. But the book is much more. It is a history of the electrical industry when electrical power was new and miraculous, technologically on the cutting edge. The book is also a history and sociology of the death penalty (very interesting), and a biography of Edison. Edison & the Electric Chair is also a window into industrial-strength ruthlessness and a portrait of a time when powerful industries could defy laws, kill people, and get away with it. The book also pauses to inform the reader of such things as how the electric chair kills (it cooks and carbonizes the brain), and of how the first death penalty electrocutions were badly botched ("He's alive!").

This book is readable and illuminating. You might not change your mind about the death penalty after reading it, but your opinion will definitely be more profound.

Today we all take electricity for granted. We pay monthly fees to large utility companies, and whenever we buy an electrical appliance we plug it in and it works. But we never think about the fact that as recently as the late 19th century, electricity in homes and businesses was a rarity. And it wasn't the government or large public companies who were rolling it out to communities across the US, but instead entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse competing to develop different types of electrical services and rushing to sign up as many customers as possible to their own companies' proprietary standards.

Perhaps the biggest rivalry in the electrical field was between Edison, who promoted his direct current system, a relatively low voltage system whose electricity could not be transmitted across a broad area without installing additional generators, and Westinghouse, whose alternating current systems allowed very high voltages to be transmitted across very large distances. No safety standards existed for the budding electric industry, so in an attempt to maintain his early business lead, Edison and his colleagues did what they could to publicize the dangers of allowing high voltage alternating current into people's homes and neighborhoods, and the relative safety of direct current.

The story of electricity in itself is a fascinating business story that parallels a lot of what we've seen in the late 20th century with the internet rush and the mad dash to roll out hundreds of ISPs, most of which have fallen by the wayside as saner business models prevail and the industry consolidates. The business ethics at the time leave a lot to be desired, not unlike the business ethics of the late 20th century.

But this engaging first-time author, Mark Essig, doesn't stop with the history of the electrical industry. He overlays the story of capital punishment into the picture. Humanists in the 19th century were debating whether the various methods used for capital punishment were humane. The use of electricity was raised as a possible painless alternative to hangings and other "barbaric" methods of killing criminals. Ironically, Edison promoted his rival Westinghouse's alternating current system as the perfect solution to the capital punishment dilemma, by stating that its dangerous system would instantly kill any criminals, not to mention thousands of regular consumers who might accidentally get in its way.

This book was a truly terrific mix of history and anecdotes about a very interesting period in history that still impacts us today and that has many parallels in modern day business. And while the book doesn't take sides on the capital punishment debate, it certainly raises a lot of interesting issues and is certain to cause a lot of discussion in that area as well.

I strongly recommend it.

While I am not usually drawn to books about technological history, the combination of narrative power and illuminating research made Edison & the Electric Chair a thoroughly engaging read. It reads like a tightly-drawn novel with compelling -- and sometimes repellent -- characters and plot. I couldn't wait to see how the story would unfold.

As someone only marginally familiar with the science and history behind the development of electricity, I found myself fascinated by Essig's cogent explanations both of how electricity works and the myriad dangers and difficulties of implementing direct current as a means of electrification. Essig deftly weaves the complex personalities of the major players (most centrally Edison and Westinghouse) into the escalating debate over direct and alternating current.

As the story of the first electrocution unfolds, Essig broadens the discussion to include not only the ethics of capital punishment and the relative humanity of the electric chair, but also larger implications of industrial competition, the rise of electric companies, and the illuminating of America.

Bolstered by meticulous yet accessible research, Essig clearly lays out the changing attitudes and approaches to capital punishment. As he explores such volatile issues as the shift from public to private execution by the state, the role of capital punishment in the moral education of the citizenry, and the irony of the state's attempts to make execution humane, Essig always gives the reader room to reach her own conclusions.

The greatest strength of this book might lie in its sensitively and lucidly wrought conclusion. Essig bridges the years from the first electrocutions to the present and shows how we are still involved in the same basic debate. While the efficiency and means of execution have changed through the last century, the crux of the debate remains the same: what is the role of the state in creating a machinery for death and should we truly make state executions palatable -- or should we finally recognize the inherent horror of it all? Essig leaves the reader with much to ponder -- and a strong foundation of cultural and scientific history from which to do so.

An interesting book if you are curious about executions. The book has some interesting details about Edison's personal life, but not to much about Westinghouse. Also, the book says very little about Tesla, who's inventions really enabled Westinghouse to overcome Edison's DC power and make AC power todays standard. Still the book is worth while for Edison fans and those who are interested in the history of execution technology.

The book shines a bright light on the way our capitalist society works: Money motivates. It motivates invention. It motivates opinion. It motivates legislation. It motivates the law. It motivates how representatives vote and how judges rule. We see the death penalty seeped in ulterior motive while naive killers, after months of solitude and religious indoctrination, reassure their nervous executers and jump in the seat they think will mercifully take them to their maker. No matter how cynical you may be about how our culture is motivated, the book confirms your most ugly suspicions.

We learn that Edison's support of death by electric chair was at least in part motivated to show the public how dangerous his competitor's system was. (Westinghouse used alternate current which is, in fact, more dangerous than Edison's use of direct current, but alternate is more practical.) The law change would have prisoners executed via the chair using Westinghouse equipment.

Westinghouse spent a small fortune defending the indigent prisoners saying electrocution was inhumane. The inhumanity of it was of no concern (though it was), it was that death using his current would be bad for business. Meanwhile, Edison hired people to show how wonderfully instant death by alternate current would be. (It often was not.) Because of Edison's fame and backing, legislators put the chair in use having no understanding of it. Gag orders are put in place so that the public would not know of the experimentation going on with the condemned. New York penitentiaries had no idea how to implement the current and the condemned suffered horribly because of their ignorance. (Edison had no idea either. His suggestions resulted in one of the most horrific electrical deaths. He was not, after all, a physician.) Even the idea of moving the condemned to a large prison facility (as apposed to local hangings) was motived by the state's desire to control mob reaction to executions and had little to do with alleviating pain and suffering caused by lynching.

The book reminds us that governments and corporations nearly never have the best interest of the working pubic in mind. Control and profit is their primary motive. Avoiding a painful death for the condemned and pubic safety are used as pretenses, but discouragingly never the true motivation for the actions and laws the powerful make.

The book is an education on more than just the specifics of this time and this instance. It's a reminder that whenever laws are passed, regulations stalled or even war declared, follow the money. There lies the real motivation.

One of the most well written, highly informative and just plain interesting books I have ever read. Highly recommend.

I should raise a warning flag to start this review: if you are squeamish, or an animal lover, this book might be a bit too much for you. There are several horrific episodes involving detailed descriptions of botched executions, as well as descriptions of electrocution experiments performed on dogs, calves, and horses. Mr. Essig's intent is not to be sensationalistic. He wants to show us that when Thomas Edison said that death by electrocution would be quick and painless, he was engaging in wishful thinking. (At least to start with. After experiments on animals showed that this form of execution was not an exact science- nobody knew, really, what voltage to use or for how long; nor were they sure of how electricity killed - he may have stooped to being disingenuous. Edison thought alternating current was dangerous, plus he didn't like George Westinghouse. Westinghouse kept infringing on Edison's patents. Edison was pushing alternating current for use with the electric chair, to drive home to the public his belief that alternating current was too dangerous for commercial use.) This book works well on many levels. We see Edison trying to get alternating current used with the electric chair, while Westinghouse tries to fight back, via his lawyers, by showing execution via electrocution was messy and unreliable, and hence was "cruel and unusual punishment." The book is also good at describing the more general competition between Edison's direct current and Westinghouse's alternating current. It takes some careful reading, but you get to learn the advantages and disadvantages of both systems at that time, and how elbow grease and creativity were used to overcome some of the problems. Also, considering that this is not really a biography, Mr. Essig gives a pretty well-rounded portrait of Edison. He was pretty eccentric - for example, sleeping under a bench or on the floor of a closet at the Menlo Park laboratory - but he wasn't lacking in social skills. He was charming and witty and he was very good at promoting himself and his inventions. Like all interesting people, he was complex: when Edison's daughter told him she was writing a novel, Edison told her "that in the case of a marriage to put in bucketfulls [sic] of misery. This would make it realistic." However, after Edison's first wife (Mary) died at the age of 29, Edison - the supposed cynic, misogynist, and misogamist - quickly fell under the spell of the 19 year old Mina Miller, and didn't hesitate to marry her. The man who supposedly thought about his work 24 hours a day remarked that while walking through Boston he "got thinking about Mina and came near being run over by a street car." Regarding Edison's wit and sense of humor, the following is just one of many examples contained in the book: Edison bought his daughter Marion a pet parrot, but the bird never learned to speak. Edison complained that the bird had "the taciturnity of a statue, and the dirt producing capacity of a drove of Buffalo." One of the many things I learned from this book was that, contrary to popular belief, Edison never called execution by electricity being "Westinghoused." One of his lawyers came up with the expression for possible use in the public relations war between the two men. To Edison's credit, he rejected using the word as a synonym for electrocution. Other examples of areas this book explores are the work environment at Menlo Park (where the men would go out into the midnight darkness, accompanied by a dog holding a lantern between his teeth, to buy some food and beer to bring back to the workshop); the politics of the time (bribes being paid to either pass a bill to institute execution by electricity rather than hanging, or to kill such a bill); the fallibility of "experts" (who made uneducated guesses on how electrocution caused death, how much current to use, etc.); and the irresponsibility of the newspapers of the time (going from one extreme to the other in admiring or denigrating both Einstein and Westinghouse; calling the electric chair a wonderful and humane invention one moment and an awful example of barbarity the next). If the book has one fault, it is that Mr. Essig uses the battle between Edison and Westinghouse to slip in his personal opposition to capital punishment. I don't feel this falls within the scope of the story, and he should have resisted the urge to use the book as a soapbox. That being said, this is still a very well-written, well-researched, and fascinating book.