the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

OOPS 16
Edison at fi rst refused to get involved, citing his moral opposition
to capital punishment. Then, within a month, he had second thoughts and
wrote back to the commission member with a radically different opinion.
Electricity would be an excellent way to execute a human being, Edison
had decided. He noted, too, that “the most suitable apparatus” for killing
people was a generator that produced—you guessed it—alternatingcurrent
electricity. And, ever helpful, Edison offered that “the most effective
of those are . . . manufactured principally in this country by Geo.
Westing house.”
With that self- serving recommendation, Edison deftly linked his
chief rival’s primary product with death. But he was just getting started.
By happy coincidence for Edison, during the spring of 1888, New
Yorkers were treated to some vivid demonstrations of electricity’s fatal
power. A snarl of overhead electrical wires had been blooming for years
on poles along New York streets, but most people considered them an
eyesore rather than a danger. That began to change in mid-April that
year. The phrase “death by wire” entered the lexicon after an exuberant
young man fried to death after picking up a downed power line. Less than
a month later, an electric company lineman inadvertently cut the wrong
wire while doing repairs on a second-story Broadway cornice. That death,
in partic ular, became macabre street theater as the lineman’s body roasted
on the cornice for an excruciatingly long time before onlookers were able
to pry his charred and smoking remains from the current’s grasp.
By then, the Edison Electric Light Company had already launched
a frontal assault on the AC forces. It had issued a helpful eighty-four-page
booklet that focused on the technical and moral failings of Westing house
and other competitors, and also chronicled in glittering detail the gruesome
deaths of various people felled by AC electricity. With its bright red
cover and fi re-alarm title (“WARNING!”), Edison’s first public rant had
all the subtlety of a trench coat flasher. According to author Jill Jonnes in
2003’s Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify
the World, the booklet reduced the whole debate to a simple matter of