ELECTRIC CHAIR

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 221, 14 June 1930, Page 17

ELECTRIC CHAIR

“Torture” Shocks America INVENTOR’S PROTEST A sensation has been caused throughout the United States by au outspoken protest against the “horrible torture of the electric chair by Nicola Tesla, tho man whose alternating current discoveries led to the adoption of this form of execution. “Death in the electric chair,” says Mr. Tesla, “is the most horrible form of torture imaginable. We call ourselves a civilised people, yet . when society decides upon the extinction of a murderer wc give him this dreadful death. Unsuitable Chairs. “The prototype of the electric chair was designed by myself and another engineer for a commercial use,” Mr. Tesla added. “Our opponents raised a cry that alternating current was deadly. To gain wide publicity for this they managed to have our commercial machines adapted to mete out capital punishment. “In course of time they were forced to use" alternating current. But, in the meantime, Legislatures had passed laws for the installation in the ‘death houses’ of prisons of electric chairs completely unsuited for such work — unsulte.d because altprnating current, due to the periodic rise and fall and reversal of direction, creates resistauee to its own passage. “The human body offers great resistance to the passage of current. The alternating current used in electric chairs does not pass in a direct course, and it is possible for vital organs to escape, and pain too great for Us to imagine lo be produced.” . Ironically' enough, the inventor points out, the electric chair was introduced by the votes of legislators who • thought themselves soft-hearted, and wished to spare tho victim pain.