Richard Moran: Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, And The Invention Of The Electric Chair

Searching for an execution method to replace hanging, a report commissioned in 1886 by the governor of New York looked into such alternatives as "beating with clubs, beheading, blowing from a cannon, boiling… defenestration, dismemberment, drowning, exposure to wild beasts (especially serpent's fangs), flaying alive, flogging." The alphabetized short-list didn't feature many promising options for a humane substitute, but few seem more absurd than a wooden chair outfitted with limb restraints, wet sponges, and sizzling electrodes. As outlined in Richard Moran's mystifying piece of pointillist history, Executioner's Current, the inception of the electric chair was a bungled mess that might play like black comedy if the device weren't still in use today. First used in 1890, the electric chair arose partially as a consequence of a heated business rivalry between electrical-power moguls Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. When Westinghouse moved into the market with an alternating-current (AC) alternative to Thomas Edison's dominant direct-current (DC) system, Edison schemed to paint AC electricity as too dangerous for home use. A notoriously shrewd businessman whose genius for invention was rivaled only by his marketing savvy, Edison lucked into a golden opportunity when New York was exploring alternatives to public hangings, which often devolved into squirming strangulations and accidental decapitations. By then a national hero, Edison (who was otherwise against the death penalty) claimed that an electric chair would do the job, as long as it used the allegedly hazardous AC current sold by his rival. As Moran writes in a typical bit of dry understatement, "Avarice, corruption, and outright dishonesty effectively shaped early debate over the electric chair." The business-oriented battle over competing currents eventually erupted into scandal, with warring factions currying favor with the two businessmen and pulpy newspaper headlines screaming about the first executed criminal being "Westinghoused." Rooted entirely in the 19th century, Executioner's Current follows the story through the laboratories, offices, and courtrooms of the players who made the electric chair the preferred method of execution for many of the past 100 years. Moran occasionally comes off as an overly microfiche-happy researcher who bogs down his narrative with details and big servings of name-soup. But with only a few explicit nods to his own ideology, he casts a condemning salvo against the electric chair—and the death penalty itself—by traipsing through the political muck surrounding the chair's history. Taking an infectiously sly approach to a misguided series of events, Executioner's Current ultimately shows how the past can serve as both a gentle reminder and a stark wakeup call to the present.