This Morbid Invention: The First Electric Chair

The harnessing of electricity by the great inventors of the Gilded Age introduced the world to the miracle of light at all hours of the day. But exposure to electricity's raw power was dangerous to man and a few thought this useful in the employment of the state's darkest responsibilities -- capital punishment. This is the story of the first electric chair, the peculiar rivalry which helped create it -- an epic feud between Edison and Westinghouse, between DC and AC -- and its fateful effects upon the life and punishment upon a man named William Kemmler, the first to be killed in this morbid seat.

You can listen to This Morbid Invention: The First Electric Chair online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

This Morbid Invention: The First Electric Chair is an episode from The First: Stories of Inventions and their Consequences by Greg Young.

This episode is 27:48 long.

This episode was published on Jan 27, 2017.

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