Thomas Alva Edison Unmasked At Last!!

Thomas Alva Edison is a revered icon in the U.S. and around the world. Many credit him with developing electricity and lighting up the world.

He is credited with the invention of the incandescent light bulb, but priority for that invention goes to an Englishman named Sir Joseph Swan (1828-1914).

Edison was a hard taskmaster, and the men who worked for him HAD to "invent" something . . . no matter whose ideas or patents they stole.

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931).

Thomas Alva Edison was a GENERAL in the Battle of the Currents, determined to stop Tesla's AC system at any cost.

DC - Direct Current was just the CRUMBS that fell from the table of the Almighty's infinite store of witty electrical inventions.

Thomas Edison as an elderly man.

Today, all the world takes AC for granted, but they don't realize how bitterly Edison, Morgan, and Rockefeller fought against this great advance in civilization.

Tesla worked for Edison for about a year and Edison failed to "discover" the greatest electrical genius that ever lived!!

Edison's only original "invention" was the ELECTRIC CHAIR!!

As we stated, Edison was a general in the Battle of the Currents which pitted Edison and Morgan against Nicola Tesla and George Westinghouse. He called AC KILLER CURRENT and he set out to prove it by killing a man with an electric chair powered by AC.

Edison hired a man named Harold P. Brown to develop the electric chair in order to discredit Tesla's AC system.

Harold Pitney Brown invented the electric chair for Thomas Edison in order to discredit AC.

Harold P. Brown was the U.S. inventor of the electric chair. He was hired by Thomas Edison to help develop the chair after he wrote an editorial for the New York Post describing how a young boy was killed after accidentally touching an exposed telegraph wire using alternating current.

At the time, Edison and his direct current system was competing with the Westinghouse Company, which used alternating current.

In 1886, New York State established a committee to determine a new more humane system of execution to replace hanging.

In order to prove that AC electricity was better for executions, Brown and Edison killed many animals, including a circus elephant, while testing their prototypes. They also held executions of animals for the press in order to ensure that AC current was associated with electrocution. It was at these events that the term electrocution was coined. Most of their experiments were conducted at Edison's West Orange, New Jersey, laboratory in 1888.

Edison's "killer current" research laboratory!!

Edison employed hundreds of men at his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory. When any workers improved on an existing invention (like the light bulb) or discovered something new, Edison immediately patented it under his name.

Edison's Menlo Park, NJ, research laboratory where thousands of animals were electrocuted.

Harold Brown electrocuting a horse at the Edison laboratory.

In order to discredit AC, Edison collected dogs, cats, sheep, horses and even elephants to electrocute with AC. The research laboratory became a veritable slaughterhouse:

"While the AC controversy raged, Harold Brown approached Thomas Edison to ask for the use of his laboratory to demonstrate that alternating current was more deadly than direct current. Edison recognized how he could use Brown to discredit alternating current and received Brown with great enthusiasm, assigning his chief electrician, Arthur Kennelly, to work with Brown. Much to Brown's delight, Edison himself promised to take a special interest in his work. Indeed, Edison wasted no time in writing to Henry Bergh of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, asking for some "good-sized" dogs on which to experiment." (Moran, Executioner's Current, p. 94).

First man to die in the electric chair was said to be "Westinghoused"

The first man to die in the electric chair was William Kemmler. He was sentenced in May, 1889, and the sentence was carried out on August 6, 1890.

Edison was determined that the execution would be carried out by AC so he had Harold Brown secretly buy and install Westinghouse AC generators in the prison.

George Westinghouse tried to halt the execution on the grounds that it was cruel and unusual punishment but all his appeals were turned down.

Modern day version of the electric chair.

On August 6, 1890, William Kemmler was the first man to die in the electric chair.

The first application of current was botched and Kemmler did not die until the current was fired up a second time. When he was dead, the newspapers said that he had been "Westinghoused."

That God that this desperate, deadly gambit by Edison failed to turn people away from AC and eventually AC triumphed over DC and became the standard universal current.

References

Moran, Richard. Executioner's Current. Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse and the Invention of the Electric Chair. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002.

Wachhorst, Wyn. Thomas Alva Edison. An American Myth. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MASS. 1981.

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