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>He (Thomas Alva) went so far as to suggest that murderers be sentenced to be
>Westinghouse electricians, and took pains to point out that the first
>electric chair (which was "invented" depressingly quickly after electricity
>was first "domesticated") was run on AC.
Actually, that exectution ENDED the controversy. Line voltage at the
time was 50 VAC, and the electric chair used ordinary line voltage --
not stepped up to high voltage, as you would expect.
The condemned criminal, attached to the electric mains in a way calculated
to maximize lethality, survived the current for a horrifyingly long time.
Nothing was heard about the lethality of alternating current after that.
A lot of people were particularly angry at Edison over this, since he
had led them to believe that this electric chair would be a painless
method of execution -- and that his fraud had led the State of New York
to instead use a method of unparalleled gruesomeness.
-- Robert
P.S. I'm told that 60 Hz won over 50 Hz in the U.S. because 50 Hz had
an objectionable flicker with certain incandescent lamps.
