• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1019 0

demonstration. On the evening of July 31,1888, a crowd of seventy-five gathered in an auditorium at Columbia College in Manhattan. The audience included the best and brightest of New York's electrical community: members of the city's Board of Electrical Control, officers of the Edison and Westinghouse companies, the editors of Electrical World and Electrical Review, and the secretary of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Brown, assisted by Kennelly and Dr. Peterson, produced a seventy-six-pound black mongrel. Although it suffered dreadfully, the dog survived successive jolts of 300,400,500, and 700 volts direct current. When given 500 volts alternating current, it "gave a series of pitiful moans, underwent a number of convulsions and died." Brown and Kennelly then prepared to experiment upon another dog, but one of Henry Bergh's ASPCA officers stopped the proceedings. The officer said that "if it was necessary to torture animals in the interest of science it should be done by the colleges or institutes and not by rival inventors."26

Undeterred, Brown scheduled a second demonstration for the evening of August 3. This time Kennelly was not present, nor were the representatives of the Edison or Westinghouse companies. To avoid further interference from the ASPCA, Brown enlisted the assistance of two physicians licensed to practice vivisection. Brown used alternating current to kill three dogs: a black mongrel (killed by 272 volts), a Newfoundland (340 volts), and a Newfoundland-setter mix (234 volts). The doctors then dissected each dog to note the physiological effects of the current.27

"If this sort of thing goes on, with the accidental killing of men and the experimental killing of dogs," the Electrician wrote, "the public will soon become as familiar with the idea that electricity is death as with the old superstition that it is life."28

"We made a fine exhibit yesterday," Harold Brown wrote to Kennelly. "It is certain that yesterday's work will get a law passed by the legislature in the fall, limiting the Voltage of alternating currents to 300 Volts."29

*The danger of an electric current actually depends on the combination of volts and amperes; a high-voltage current is not dangerous if the amperage is low. Published reports on these debates, however, usually noted only the voltage, omitting the amperage measurements.

CHAPTER 12

"Criminal Economy''

THE Electrical Review thought so little of Harold Brown that it published a poem, "Mr. Brown and the Dog," which included the sarcastic couplet "No company employed him, and his motives he felt sure,/ Were thoroughly unbiased, philanthropic, and most pure." No one could prove that Edison Electric employed Brown, but the logic of such an arrangement was obvious: If Brown succeeded in outlawing high-voltage alternating current, Edison Electric would gain an enormous advantage.1

That goal appeared to be increasingly unattainable, since even more modest efforts to regulate electricity had been stymied. United States Illuminating continued to fight the state law requiring it to move its Manhattan wires from overhead poles to underground conduits, and in the fall of 1888 the company scored another victory. The state supreme court granted a preliminary injunction preventing the city from removing its wires. As Harold Brown and Arthur Kennelly were killing animals to prove the dangers of alternating current, lighting companies were winning the right to keep that current sizzling overhead.2

While Thomas Edison stayed in the background, Kennelly became an outspoken advocate of execution by alternating current. The editors of electrical journals regarded Brown with deep suspicion, but they took note when Kennelly spoke in defense of the dog-killing tests at the Edison lab. The Electrician, which had harshly criticized Brown's claims, changed its tune after hearing from Edison's chief electrician. "[A] letter from Mr. A. E. Kennelly," the Electrician noted, "completely rehabilitates Mr. Brown's position, and in our estimation invests the experiments with an