Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [88]
Part of the Edison exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1889.
Edison was not always gracious enough to return the praise. "What has struck me so far chiefly is the absolute laziness of everybody over here," he told an American reporter in Paris. "When do these people work?"2
The fruits of Edison's own labor were obvious. To advertise his products, he had purchased the single largest exhibit space at the fair, covering a third of the area allotted to American companies. The display featured many of Edison's inventions: telegraphs, motors, electric railways, telephones, batteries, electric pens, typewriters, phonographs, and a complete central power station that included dynamos, underground conductors, and meters. To guide visitors to his display, Edison lit a beacon: a forty-foot-tall model of an incandescent lamp, lit from within by 13,000 standard incandescent bulbs and sitting atop a twenty-foot pedestal. Twelve steps of multicolored bulbs led up to the top of the pedestal, which contained a niche with a bust of the inventor. Above the display, Edison was spelled out in lights.3
The inventor paused in his self-promotion to advocate another new electrical device: He spoke so glowingly about execution by alternating current that the French Academy of Sciences decided to investigate the matter (but ultimately retained the guillotine).4
Just outside Edison's Paris hotel stood a statue of Napoleon. As he passed by it each day, he might have recalled the time when the explorer Henry M. Stanley dropped by the Orange laboratory to hear the phonograph. After listening for a while, Stanley asked Edison whom he would choose if he could "hear the voice of any man whose name is known in the history of the world."
"Napoleon's," Edison answered briskly.
The pious Stanley replied, "I should like to hear the voice of our Saviour."
"Well, you know," said Edison, not a bit flustered. "I like a bustler!"5
As he basked in the adoration of Paris, the unmasking of Harold Brown revealed that Edison played a starring role in one of the strangest hustles in the history of American business.
IN 1888, when controversies over electrical execution first arose, Edison was asked his opinion about capital punishment in general. "There are wonderful possibilities in each human soul, and I cannot endorse a method of punishment which destroys the last chance of usefulness," he said. "I think that the killing of a human being is an act of foolish barbarity. It is childish—unworthy of a developed intelligence."6
Edison, however, had no qualms about helping to create a better way to kill. Arthur Kennelly became a true believer in the humanity of electrical execution, which he called "the signal of a rising civilization." Edison's support for the new method was more measured but nonetheless genuine. As he told the Sun, "I am not in favor of executions, but if they are to take place electricity will do the work, and it is more certain and perhaps a little more civilized than the rope."7
This assertion would have been equally true for any make of alternating dynamo, but Edison helped to ensure that Westinghouse machines would be used. Although he never directly explained why he participated in the conspiracy, his rivals claimed to know the reasons. George Westinghouse believed Edison's actions were economically motivated, an attempt to neutralize Westinghouse's technological advantage by imposing government regulations on alternating current. Bourke Cockran thought it was personal; at the Kemmler hearings he hinted that Edison's pique over Westinghouse's infringement of his incandescent lamp patents drove him to seek revenge. Both believed that Edison's relentless focus on the question of safety was merely a dodge for selfish motives.8
If Edison's only goal had been to regain his hold on the electricity market, he had more conventional avenues open to him. In 1886 Edison Electric had purchased American rights to one of Europe's best alternating-current