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Found out the first electric chair ran on Westinghouse AC to prove it was dangerous | Electricians - Vivisector

Found out the first electric chair ran on Westinghouse AC to prove it was dangerous

I was reading up on old electrical history (you know, for fun) and saw that the first electric chair in 1890 used a Westinghouse AC generator. The guy who made it, Harold Brown, picked AC on purpose because he was trying to show the public it was more deadly than DC (which Edison pushed). They had to buy the generator from Westinghouse under a fake name because the company didn't want to be linked to it. Kind of a wild bit of trade history, right? Anyone else come across a weird fact like that from the early days?

4 comments

4 Comments

grantw415mo ago

That whole current war was a wild time. Makes you wonder how many other tech standards got set by shady marketing stunts, right? The fact they had to sneak-buy the generator is the perfect detail.

alice9285mo ago

It's funny you bring up shady marketing, @grantw41. Reminds me of reading about how some early car companies would pay people to push stalled cars of rival brands into ditches. Makes you wonder how much of what we think is the 'best' tech is just the one that had the dirtiest fight. Those old stories really do make the current war look tame by comparison.

cole_murphy5mo ago

Ever read about how Edison's crew would scare people with AC power demos? I got deep into that rabbit hole once, and it's crazy how much of that early tech history was just brutal PR wars. What's the wildest old-school sabotage story you've come across?

ramirez.vera2mo ago

ngl i used to just think the whole current war thing was overblown, like two rich guys arguing over which plug was better. but then i read about the AC chair stunt and it totally flipped how i see it. like, they literally built a killing machine using someone else's tech to smear their name. that's not just business competition, that's straight up evil genius level stuff. makes you realize how much of what we take for granted was decided by who was willing to play the dirtiest. honestly changes how i look at old tech rivalries now, like the car ditch thing someone mentioned. it's wild how much of our modern world is built on these crazy sabotage stories nobody talks about.