An inventor named Harold Brown, however, conducted several grisly prototype experiments under the auspices of Thomas Edison, and helped construct the chair used in the first execution.
In 1888, Brown wrote an editorial to the New York Post, describing the "death of a boy who touched a straggling telegraph wire running on AC current." The state was looking for a humane replacement for hanging, a method that had resulted in some gruesome episodes of strangulation and/or decapitation. Subsequently, Brown was hired by Edison to help create the electric chair.
The history of "old sparky" is fraught with questionable science, capitalist backstabbing, and flagrant animal abuse. In a canny ploy to blackball his AC competitor Westinghouse, Edison (a DC man) encouraged the use of AC electrical current in electrocution. The idea was to portray AC as incredibly dangerous; he and Brown sacrificed dozens of hapless animals, including a circus elephant, in a brutal smear campaign. It worked.
