Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair

In this amazing story of high stakes competition between two titans, Richard Moran shows how the electric chair developed not out of the desire to be more humane but through an effort by one nineteenth-century electric company to discredit the other.
In 1882, Thomas Edison ushered in the “age of electricity” when he illuminated Manhattan’s Pearl Street with his direct current (DC) system. Six years later, George Westinghouse lit up Buffalo with his less expensive alternating current (AC). The two men quickly became locked in a fierce rivalry, made all the more complicated by a novel new application for their product: the electric chair. When Edison set out to persuade the state of New York to use Westinghouse’s current to execute condemned criminals, Westinghouse fought back in court, attempting to stop the first electrocution and keep AC from becoming the “executioner’s current.” In this meticulously researched account of the ensuing legal battle and the horribly botched first execution, Moran raises disturbing questions not only about electrocution, but about about our society’s tendency to rely on new technologies to answer moral questions.

Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Exhibit BuildingNew York World's Fair 1939This building provides the visitor with a behind-the-scenes view of the many activities of the Westinghouse Company. The latest developments in electrical and mechanical science are exhibited. Architects: Skidmore and OwingsDate: 1939Source Type: PostcardPrinter, Publisher, Photographer: Manhattan Post Card Publishing Company (#WF19)Postmark: NoneCollection: Steven R. Shook

Free Westinghouse electric sewing machine. Manufactured by The Free Sewing Machine Company, Rockford, IL. Based on the serial number it appears to be a late 30s model. It is missing the table it originally sat on.

George Westinghouse's story is rich in drama and in breadth, a story of power, city building, and applying the Golden Rule in business. His biography intersects with those of many great personalities of the Gilded Age, such as J.P Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie, the Mellon Family, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Nikola Tesla.
One of the most successful industrialists in America, George Westinghouse was a wizard who took a much different approach than Thomas Edison. Westinghouse became a manager of innovation. He was not only an inventor in his own right, but the orchestra leader of a symphony of ideas. Westinghouse developed the corporate model of invention and research.
His innovations allowed Westinghouse to take the lead in electrical distribution. While Edison electrified New York City, the nation turned in favor of the AC current system of Westinghouse. He was a pioneer in pension plans and in planned communities for workers. His natural gas distribution system did more than Carnegie's capital to make Pittsburgh the Steel City.
The panic of 1907 changed Westinghouse. It took the energy out of the industrial lion and resulted in a personal depression, which led to his death in1914.
Samuel Gompers said that, if industry had been run by men like Westinghouse, there would have been no need for unions. Employees loved the gentle genius who worried about them routinely. Over 55,000 employees voluntarily collected money for a memorial to Westinghouse in 1955; this memorial would have been the one he cherished the most.