We didn't listen!: Remember when leading scientist Thomas Edison warned us about the dangers of alternating current?

War of Currents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edison's publicity campaign

Edison carried out a campaign to discourage the use[17] of alternating current, including spreading disinformation on fatal AC accidents, publicly killing animals, and lobbying against the use of AC in state legislatures. Edison directed his technicians, primarily Arthur Kennelly and Harold P. Brown,[18] to preside over several AC-driven killings of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs but also unwanted cattle and horses.[improper synthesis?] Acting on these directives, they were to demonstrate to the press that alternating current was more dangerous than Edison's system of direct current.[19] He also tried to popularize the term for being electrocuted as being "Westinghoused". Years after DC had lost the "war of the currents," in 1902, his film crew made a movie of the electrocution with high voltage AC, supervised by Edison employees, of Topsy, a Coney Island circus elephant which had recently killed three men.[20]

Edison opposed capital punishment, but his desire to disparage the system of alternating current led to the invention of the electric chair. Harold P. Brown, who was being secretly paid by Edison, built the first electric chair for the state of New York to promote the idea that alternating current was deadlier than DC.[21]