Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [59]
"How quickly will electricity kill a man?" the reporter asked.
"In the ten-thousandth part of a second," Edison replied.
When the reporter asked how to attach the electrodes to the condemned man, Edison picked up pencil and paper and sketched two hands manacled, with a chain attached to each manacle. The officers of the law could handcuff the condemned man in his cell and lead him to the place of execution, Edison explained, where a wire from a dynamo would be attached to each handcuff. "When the time comes, touch a button, close the circuit, and"—Edison snapped his fingers—uit is over."
"The current," Edison made sure to tell the reporter, "should come from an alternating machine."
CHAPTER 11
"A Desperate Eight"
ALTERNATING CURRENT was much On Edison's mind during the summer of 1888. The French syndicate's grip on the world copper supply had not loosened, which meant that the price of conductors for Edison's system remained high. The Thomson-Houston Electrical Company, which previously sold arc lighting and direct-current incandescent equipment, began selling an alternating system as well, giving Edison a second major competitor in incandescent lighting. George Westinghouse continued to win most of the business in small towns, and he was doing well in cities, too. An Edison agent in one town wrote to describe "a desperate fight between the Westinghouse Co. and Edison" to win a lighting contract. Francis Upton, Edison's longtime associate, urged him to build a new system that could transmit greater distances and therefore compete "in places where now we have no chance, or where the Westinghouse Alternating System will be used."1
Among the drawbacks of the alternating system were the lack of a motor and meter. By March 1888, however, word leaked out that Westinghouse engineers had produced a meter, which would allow their current to be sold more efficiently. Even more alarmingly, in May the U.S. Patent Office issued five patents for an alternating-current motor to Nikola Tesla, a brilliant young Serbian inventor who earlier had worked for Edison. George Westinghouse snapped up the patents and put Tesla on his payroll. The motor was not yet ready for market, but the Edison interests worried that soon enough they would lose another major advantage over the competition.2
Early in 1888 Edward Johnson, Edison Electric's president, printed hundreds of copies of a long, scarlet-covered pamphlet titled A Warning firom the Edison Electric Light Company and mailed them to reporters and officials of local lighting utilities that had bought or were considering buying equipment from Edison's rivals. Johnson cited numerous violations of Edison patents—including the incandescent lamp—by Westinghouse, Thomson-Houston, and other companies, and he cautioned buyers of these rival systems that they might get stuck with worthless equipment if Edison's patents were upheld. The Edison system, he added, was far more efficient than its alternating-current rivals. Johnson also issued a grave warning concerning the dangers of alternating current. "Death-dealing" high-tension currents had killed dozens, Johnson reported, and he reprinted excerpts from newspaper articles about electrical accidents. The Edison system, on the other hand, had a "glorious record" without "a single instance of loss of life."3
Manufacturers of alternating current rose to its defense, and in the late spring of 1888 electrical societies staged heated debates between partisans of each system. "It is no longer a question of discussing the pros and cons in amicable conclave," the journal Electrician reported, "but of fighting tooth and nail." "The battle of the currents," as it became known, had begun.4
Just as the battle was heating up, George Westinghouse made a gesture of peace by writing to Edison. "I believe there has been a systematic attempt on the part of some people to do a great deal of mischeaf [sic] and creat [sic]