Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [55]
The law decreed that death must be "inflicted by causing to pass through the body of the convict a current of electricity of sufficient intensity to cause death." No one had yet specified the type of generator, voltage, amperage, or how to attach electrodes to the body.16
"The technical difficulties of killing a man with electricity . . . are considerable," a medical journal stated, "and apparently have not been by any means completely studied out by the learned Commission." According to the Herald, Dr. William A. Hammond, former U.S. surgeon general, described the commission's arguments as "the weakest he had ever seen in an official paper." The Herald went on to observe that the new law seemed to be "somewhat senseless if not, indeed, very idiotic."17
All the bluster about progress and civilization and science could not hide the fact that no one knew how to kill a man with electricity. The New York World recognized the deficiencies in the commission's report. Rather than simply point out these facts, the newspaper decided to investigate, and a reporter persuaded Thomas Edison to conduct some experiments.18
BY THE SUMMER of 1888, calling on Thomas Edison required a journey to Orange, New Jersey, where the inventor had a new home, a new laboratory, and a new wife.
Like many nineteenth-century widowers, Edison did not dawdle in his quest for another bride. Early in 1885—about i months after Mary died—Edison traveled to an industrial exposition in New Orleans in the company of his daughter, Dot. As much as he loved machines, Edison found himself distracted by Mina Miller, a nineteen-year-old, dark-haired beauty from Ohio who was attending the exposition with her father, Lewis Miller, a wealthy inventor of farm machinery. Edison could not pursue his attraction in New Orleans, but opportunity arose again soon, when he traveled to Boston and stayed at the home of Ezra Gilliland, a friend and business associate. Conveniently enough, Mina Miller attended school in Boston and was a friend and frequent visitor of the Gillilands.19
Edison became so infatuated with Mina that he lingered in Boston, eager for more encounters. Neglecting the rough labors of the laboratory, he sank into the refined world of the Gilliland household and joined in the sorts of activities—polite literature, boating parties, parlor games—that he normally disdained. He recorded his experiences in a diary, the only time in his life that he kept one. He read Hawthorne, Goethe, and Rousseau, and was not much impressed with any of them, and he found some of the outdoor activities even less congenial. One day after supper he and Dot threw a ball back and forth. Amazingly, Edison claimed it was the first time he ever played catch: "It was as hard as Nero's heart—nearly broke my baby-finger—gave it up." Dot read him the outline of her proposed novel, which was about "a marriage under duress." Her father told her "that in case of a marriage to put in bucketfulls [sic] of misery. This would make it realistic."20
For a man with such a pessimistic view of the wedded state, he cseemed terribly anxious to enter into it again. Mina Miller became "a sort of yardstick for measuring perfection," the inventor wrote, and the mere thought of her drove him to distraction. While walking the streets of Boston, he "got thinking about Mina and came near being run over by a street car." As the ultimate sign of his love, the famously slovenly dresser tried to please his beloved by improving his wardrobe: "For the first time in my life I have bought a pair of premeditatedly tight shoes—These shoes are small and look nice."21
Dot, to her dismay, found that she had been supplanted in her father's affections by a girl just six years older than she. Even Edison recalled that his constant talk about Mina "makes Dot jealous, she threatens to become an incipient Lucretia Borgia." Dot later recalled that this time was "the most unhappy of my life."22