m98115, right. DC would have required a power generating station every 1.5-3 miles. Would have made for some crowded city neighborhoods and weird rural areas.
Okay. It wasn’t Edison who did it, but why let truth get in the way of a good meme. Edison had electrocuted a good number of animals during the AC-DC war, but that issue had been settled for 10 years before Topsy the “bad elephant” was done in by electrocution. One of Edison’s companies did film the event.
Notice that there is absolutely no attempt whatsoever to understand Edison’s reasons or determine his motivations here. Only an attack on his reasons by assuming evil motivations.
This takes actual thought, but suppose Edison actually believed that electrocution was a more humane form of execution. At the time, they were executing murderers by hanging – highly unreliable and often resulting in a long and torturous death. Electrocution is imperfect and looks horrendous, but it’s much quicker and more reliable in comparison with hanging. Edison had been besieged with requests to develop a more humane method of execution. Ask an early 20th century expert on electricity to come up with a method of execution and guess what he’s going to come up with.
Electrocution seems barbaric compared to lethal injection, but lethal injection is a later development. Obviously it’s not fair to judge someone by standards of a later century, nor is it intellectually honest to say that Edison was “trying to kill people” while leaving out the fact that the people who were electrocuted were convicted murderers who had been sentenced to death and who would have been killed by some less reliable means. There have been a ton of negative assumptions and accusations here, and an accusation equals a conviction when the defendant is not around to defend himself, or face or cross examine his accusers. Guilty until proven innocent is the presumption.
Suppose Edison actually believed that DC was safer than AC (which he had every reason to) and that he would in fact save many lives by promoting DC over AC. In that case, his motivation would be altruism, not greed. (For someone supposedly obsessed with greed, he certainly spent a lifetime caring more about hard work than about money or spending it, in practice.)
Suppose Edison wasn’t omniscient and couldn’t beam himself into the 21st century and look back with 20-20 hindsight. Suppose he was, by trial and error, venturing into unknown territory to try to come up with the best solutions to the problems of invention for the benefit of people in general. And suppose he was inventing for his time and not for all time.
But no, forget about understanding. It’s the fad these days by people who are still benefitting from his advancements to attack the man who gave us practical electric lights, sound recording, and who advanced motion pictures etc. etc. Of course, he gave us all of these things only because he was evil and greedy – just accept it without research, logic, understanding or question (Obviously if he wasn’t so greedy, he would have given us LED lights instead of incandescent ones.) Just close your mind and repeat after me “Tesla good, Edison bad, Tesla good, Edison bad…” Then pat yourself on the back for being so clever and enlightened.
m98115 about 9 years ago
AC had huge technological advantages for distribution of power and electric motors.Edison liked to shock men urinating, too.
Olddog1 about 9 years ago
m98115, right. DC would have required a power generating station every 1.5-3 miles. Would have made for some crowded city neighborhoods and weird rural areas.
Droptma Styx about 9 years ago
Turns out DC did a better job electrocuting people anyway. They tried an AC execution and it reportedly was pretty horrific.
Christopher Shea about 9 years ago
Warning: icky details.
MeGoNow Premium Member about 9 years ago
I believe an elephant was also featured in one of his demonstrations. The elephant was unavailable for comment afterward.
MeGoNow Premium Member about 9 years ago
Okay. It wasn’t Edison who did it, but why let truth get in the way of a good meme. Edison had electrocuted a good number of animals during the AC-DC war, but that issue had been settled for 10 years before Topsy the “bad elephant” was done in by electrocution. One of Edison’s companies did film the event.
Stephen Gilberg about 9 years ago
Max Cannon used “bastardry” more than a decade ago.
newmooo about 9 years ago
Notice that there is absolutely no attempt whatsoever to understand Edison’s reasons or determine his motivations here. Only an attack on his reasons by assuming evil motivations.
This takes actual thought, but suppose Edison actually believed that electrocution was a more humane form of execution. At the time, they were executing murderers by hanging – highly unreliable and often resulting in a long and torturous death. Electrocution is imperfect and looks horrendous, but it’s much quicker and more reliable in comparison with hanging. Edison had been besieged with requests to develop a more humane method of execution. Ask an early 20th century expert on electricity to come up with a method of execution and guess what he’s going to come up with.
Electrocution seems barbaric compared to lethal injection, but lethal injection is a later development. Obviously it’s not fair to judge someone by standards of a later century, nor is it intellectually honest to say that Edison was “trying to kill people” while leaving out the fact that the people who were electrocuted were convicted murderers who had been sentenced to death and who would have been killed by some less reliable means. There have been a ton of negative assumptions and accusations here, and an accusation equals a conviction when the defendant is not around to defend himself, or face or cross examine his accusers. Guilty until proven innocent is the presumption.
Suppose Edison actually believed that DC was safer than AC (which he had every reason to) and that he would in fact save many lives by promoting DC over AC. In that case, his motivation would be altruism, not greed. (For someone supposedly obsessed with greed, he certainly spent a lifetime caring more about hard work than about money or spending it, in practice.)
Suppose Edison wasn’t omniscient and couldn’t beam himself into the 21st century and look back with 20-20 hindsight. Suppose he was, by trial and error, venturing into unknown territory to try to come up with the best solutions to the problems of invention for the benefit of people in general. And suppose he was inventing for his time and not for all time.
But no, forget about understanding. It’s the fad these days by people who are still benefitting from his advancements to attack the man who gave us practical electric lights, sound recording, and who advanced motion pictures etc. etc. Of course, he gave us all of these things only because he was evil and greedy – just accept it without research, logic, understanding or question (Obviously if he wasn’t so greedy, he would have given us LED lights instead of incandescent ones.) Just close your mind and repeat after me “Tesla good, Edison bad, Tesla good, Edison bad…” Then pat yourself on the back for being so clever and enlightened.