Edison And The Electric Chair
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Edison And The Electric Chair
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Author : Mark Essig
language : en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Release Date : 2009-05-26
Edison And The Electric Chair written by Mark Essig and has been published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2009-05-26 with History categories.
Thomas Edison stunned America in 1879 by unveiling a world-changing invention--the light bulb--and then launching the electrification of America's cities. 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 himself. Edison championed the electric chair for reasons that remain controversial to this day. Was Edison genuinely concerned about the suffering of the condemned? Was he waging a campaign to smear his rival George Westinghouse's alternating current and boost his own system? Or was he warning the public of real dangers posed by the high-voltage alternating wires that looped above hundreds of America's streets? Plumbing the fascinating history of electricity, Mark Essig explores America's love of technology and its fascination with violent death, capturing an era when the public was mesmerized and terrified by an invisible force that produced blazing light, powered streetcars, carried telephone conversations--and killed.
Edison And The Electric Chair
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Author : Mark Essig
language : en
Publisher: Penguin Books
Release Date : 2003
Edison And The Electric Chair written by Mark Essig and has been published by Penguin Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2003 with Capital punishment categories.
In 1879 Thomas Edison unveiled a world-changing invention - electricity, an invisible force that produced light, powered streetcars and carried telephone conversations. A decade later Edison, formerly an avowed opponent of the death penalty, championed the creation of a completely different sort of device - the electric chair. Edison promoted the electric chair for reasons that remain controversial to this day. Was he genuinely concerned to find a humane alternative to the gallows? Was it part of his bitter battle with rival George Westinghouse for commercial dominance? Or, in fact, was he warning the public of real dangers posed by the high-voltage wires that looped above America's streets? In Edison & the Electric Chair Mark Essig delivers a provocative new examination of Edison - the man and the inventor. He also explores America's fascination with technology and violent death.
Executioner S Current
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Author : Richard Moran
language : en
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date : 2007-12-18
Executioner S Current written by Richard Moran and has been published by Vintage this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2007-12-18 with History categories.
A "fascinating and provocative" story (The Washington Post) of high stakes competition between two titans that shows how the electric chair developed 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.
Blood And Volts
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Author : Thom Metzger
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1996
Blood And Volts written by Thom Metzger and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1996 with Biography & Autobiography categories.
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 and early pinnacle of modernity, the high altar of the rising cult of progress. In the popular imagination, Tesla and Edison were seen as nearly superhuman beings, and their struggle was not only for wealth and power, but to reshape the face of America. In Blood and Volts, Metzger creates a unique synthesis of scholarship, storytelling and cultural critique to present a clear and compelling story of America struggling to define itself through scientific innovation.
Crusader Nation
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Author : David Traxel
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2006
Crusader Nation written by David Traxel and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2006 with categories.
The Electric Chair
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Author : Craig Brandon
language : en
Publisher: McFarland
Release Date : 2016-03-03
The Electric Chair written by Craig Brandon and has been published by McFarland this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-03-03 with Social Science categories.
This book provides a history of the electric chair and analyzes its features, its development, and the manner of its use. Chapters cover the early conceptual stages as a humane alternative to hanging, and the rivalry between Edison and Westinghouse that was one of the main forces in the chair’s adoption as a mode of execution. Also presented are an account of the terrible first execution and a number of the subsequent gruesome employments of the chair. The text explores the changing attitudes toward the chair as state after state replaced it with lethal injection.
Trog Clay
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Author : Michael Vukadinovich
language : en
Publisher: Original Works Publishing
Release Date : 2014
Trog Clay written by Michael Vukadinovich and has been published by Original Works Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014 with Drama categories.
Synopsis: Trog and Clay is a wildly imaginative retelling of the genesis of the electric chair. Based on the actual trial transcripts of William Kemmler, the first person put to death by electrocution, this skewed comedy obscured the line between fact and invention, while wryly looking into America's grim history. The bumbling duo, Trog and Clay, unwittingly get caught up in the rivalry between two inventors, George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison. While one is destined to create the electrical system that will power America, the other will be remembered for killing criminals in a way that isn't as painless as is initially claimed. Cast Size: 4 or 6 Males, 2 Females "... powered by boisterous dialogue and some great moments of physical comedy." - The Scotsman, Edinburgh Festival Review "a worthy new play." - Backstage "one of LA's most imaginative young playwrights" - Stage Scene LA
Old Sparky
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Author : Anthony Galvin
language : en
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Release Date : 2016-10-18
Old Sparky written by Anthony Galvin and has been published by Simon and Schuster this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-10-18 with History categories.
A shocking exploration of America’s preferred method of capital punishment. In early 2013, Robert Gleason became the latest victim of the electric chair, a peculiarly American execution method. Shouting Póg mo thóin (“Kiss my ass” in Gaelic), he grinned as electricity shot through his system. When the current was switched off, his body slumped against the leather restraints, and Gleeson, who had strangled two fellow inmates to ensure his execution was not postponed, was dead. The execution had gone flawlessly—not a guaranteed result with the electric chair, which has gone horrifically wrong on many occasions. Old Sparky covers the history of capital punishment in America and the “current wars” between Edison and Westinghouse that led to the development of the electric chair. It examines how the electric chair became the most popular method of execution in America before being superseded by lethal injection. Famous executions are explored, alongside quirky last meals and poignant last words. The death penalty remains a hot topic of debate in America, and Old Sparky does not shy away from that controversy. Executions have gone spectacularly wrong, with convicts being set alight or needing up to five jolts of electricity before dying. There have been terrible miscarriages of justice, and the death penalty has not been applied even-handedly. Historically, African Americans, the mentally challenged, and poor defendants have been likely to get the chair, an anomaly which led the Supreme Court to briefly suspend the death penalty. Since the resumption of capital punishment in 1976, Texas alone has executed more than five hundred prisoners, and death row is full. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Empires Of Light
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Author : Jill Jonnes
language : en
Publisher: Random House
Release Date : 2003-08-19
Empires Of Light written by Jill Jonnes and has been published by Random House this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2003-08-19 with History categories.
The gripping history of electricity and how the fateful collision of Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation’s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world’s first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history, the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamber—Jonnes takes us on the tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair.
The Last Days Of Night
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Author : Graham Moore
language : en
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Release Date : 2016-09-22
The Last Days Of Night written by Graham Moore and has been published by Simon and Schuster this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-09-22 with Fiction categories.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A thrilling novel based on actual events, about the nature of genius, the cost of ambition, and the battle to electrify America—from the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game and author of The Sherlockian SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING EDDIE REDMAYNE New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history—and a vast fortune. A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win. Paul’s client, George Westinghouse, has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion-dollar question: Who invented the light bulb and holds the right to power the country? The task facing Cravath is truly daunting -- win. And the stakes are immense: the winner of the case will illuminate America. In obsessive pursuit of victory, Paul crosses paths with Nikola Tesla, an eccentric, brilliant inventor who may hold the key to defeating Edison, and with Agnes Huntington, a beautiful opera singer who proves to be a flawless performer on stage and off. As Paul takes greater and greater risks, he’ll find that everyone in his path is playing their own game, and no one is quite who they seem... Praise for The Last Days of Night ‘Moore weaves a complex web. . . He conjures Gilded Age New York City so vividly, it feels like only yesterday’ Entertainment Weekly ‘A model of superior historical fiction . . . Graham Moore digs deep into long-forgotten facts to give us an exciting, sometimes astonishing story of two geniuses locked in a brutal battle to change the world. . .[A] brilliant journey into the past’The Washington Post ‘Mesmerizing, clever, and absolutely crackling…a beautifully researched, endlessly entertaining novel that will leave you buzzing’ Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl ‘Part legal thriller, part tour of a magical time – the age of wonder – and once you’ve finished it, you’ll find it hard to return to the world of now’ Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City