Vernian obscura et Trivia 4

                                     Quentin R. Skrabec Ph.D.

 

Verne’s Future “Demon of Electricity”

Verne foresaw man’s misuse of electricity in Paris in the Twentieth Century. In Verne’s future Paris of 1960, he used the power of Faraday’s electric arc to light the city but foresaw a darker use. Verne noted in 1863 that in his futuristic Paris of 1960: “Decapitations were no longer in vogue; criminals were now executed by electric charge. Surely it was a better imitation of divine vengeance [referencing the killing power of lighting].” This prediction was a leap by Verne but in technology and culture.

 While science suggested the killing potential of electricity as early as the 1700s, it wasn’t until 1889 that criminals were executed by electricity using the AC current system of Westinghouse, which was developed in the 1870s.  In Verne’s novel of 1863, it was questionable whether the DC batteries could supply the power needed.

Ben Franklin, in 1749, hosted an electrical feast, which began with Franklin electrocuting a turkey (DC current by batteries)  and then roasting it on a spit turned by an electrically powered jack. Initially, Franklin needed several shocks to kill the turkey fully, but Franklin persisted for years until he nearly killed himself.  Having learned from his mistakes by 1773, Franklin noted: “The one who does the operation must be very aware, lest it happen to him, accidentally or inadvertently, to mortify his flesh instead of that of his hen."

In the 1820s, scientists like Sir Humphry Davy suggested that a battery-powered DC current could kill. AC current, developed by Faraday’s dynamo, offered more killing power in the 1870s, and stray dogs were being executed. Verne had closely followed some of Faraday’s AC experiments of the 1850s and 1860s. At the time of Verne’s writing in 1863, there is no record of anyone suggesting “electrocution” of criminals.

 In 1879, a stage carpenter was accidentally killed by the alternating current of a Siemens dynamo that was giving a voltage of about 250 volts at the time.

In 1889, the state of New York sentenced its first criminal, a street merchant named William Kemmler, to be executed by AC current in their new form of capital punishment. Like Franklin’s turkey, it took two attempts to kill him. In the second attempt, Kemmler received a double shock of 2,000 volts. Leon Czolgosz was executed in the electric chair in 1901 for the assassination of President William McKinley. Widespread use of electrical execution took to the 1920s and delinced after that. By the 1960s, most electric chairs were museum pieces.

 

References

See paris2060.blogspot.com

Allison Marsh, “Ben Franklin’s Other Great Electrical Discovery: Turkey Tenderization,” IEEE Spectrum, November 2018

Editor, “In Death by Electric Currents and by Lightning,” Nature 91, 466–469 (1913).