In this amazing story of high stakes competition between two
titans, Richard Moran shows how the electric chair developed not
out of the desire to be more humane but 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.
關於作者：
Richard Moran is professor of sociology at Mount Holyoke
College and the author of Knowing Right from Wrong: The Insanity
Defense of Daniel McNaughtan and numerous articles and reviews.
He has also served as a commentator for National Public Radio’s
Morning Edition and written op-eds for the Boston Globe,
Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago
Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, Newsweek,
and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in South Hadley,
Massachusetts.
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