Electric Performance

Thomas Edison is best known for being an inventor and innovator. Yet he was also a clever showman, and in an attempt to win over consumers, he electrocuted an elephant, and a horse, and many dogs, and even people.

At the dawn of the adoption of electricity Edison saw an opportunity to profit by being an energy supplier. His systems offered direct current power (DC), which is electricity that flows through circuits in one direction. A drawback of DC power is that it loses energy as it travels so many small power plants have to be located near customers for this system to work. Westinghouse, a competing company, soon developed an alternating current (AC) system which has the ability to maintain its power over great distances, a clear advantage.

Facing this competition, Edison sought to dissuade the public from adopting AC by trying to convince them it was unsafe. One way he did this was by involvement in the development of the Electric Chair as a means to execute prisoners. In particular he made sure that when first used, it would be powered by Westinghouse AC generators. Leading up to the use of AC power for killing people, Edison displayed the use of AC power to electrocute numerous animals. Perhaps the most famous of these displays was the 1903 electrocution of Topsy, the Coney Island Luna Park Zoo Elephant. Fifteen hundred people were on hand to watch.