10 results for "Thomas Edison Chair" between $5.00 and $25.00

Pages: 304, Paperback, Vintage

About three months prior to his execution, Kemmler dictated his last will and testament to the head turnkey, guard James Warner. The men were interrupted several times by the sound of hammering from two convicts working nearby on the plain pine box that would serve as Kemmler's coffin. Electrician Edwin F. Davis, who would continue as an executioner for the next twenty-four years-throwing the switch on 240 condemned men-could be heard installing the execution apparatus in the room adjacent to Kemmler...

Tracing the origins and development of the electric chair, a story of industrial and political intrigue describes the battle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse for commercial control of electricity, the first use of electricity to execute a criminal, the legal battle that ensued over the punishment, and its long-term implications for the capital punishment debate. 20,000 first printing.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, General Electric (using Thomas Edison's direct current) and Westinghouse (employing Nikola Tesla's groundbreaking alternating current) were locked in combat to determine which would dominate the technological fate of the nation. Electricity was thought to be a highly ambiguous force: both godlike creative power and demonic destroyer of life. Th. Metzger argues that for scientists of the day, as well as the general populace, the electric chair was both harbinger...

Thomas Edison stunned America in 1879 by unveiling a world-changing invention--the lightbulb. A decade later, despite having been an avowed opponent of the death penalty, Edison threw his laboratory resources and reputation behind the creation of a very different sort of device--the electric chair. Deftly exploring this startling chapter in American history, Edison & the Electric Chair delivers both a vivid portrait of a nation on the cusp of modernity and a provocative new examination of Edison...