Encore: Electric Chair | Power to the People | 1

American Innovations

Wondery

Steven Johnson, History, Kids & Family, Education For Kids, Science

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2021

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On August 6, 1890, a prisoner named William Kemmler became the first man executed in the electric chair. It was designed to be a more humane form of execution, but the gruesome scene in the death chamber that day revealed the device to be anything but.

Behind the story of the electric chair lies another story, involving three titans of innovation—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse — locked in a desperate fight for control of the future of electricity. Their conflict would take lives, spark scientific advances and revolutionize human existence.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to American innovations
0:03.6	ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:05.6	Download the app today.
0:08.1	Join Wondery Plus to listen to American innovations
0:11.0	one week early and ad-free in the Wondery app.
0:14.4	Download the Wondery app in your Apple or Google Play
0:17.2	mobile app store today.
0:20.6	Here's a listener note.
0:22.0	After our exploration of the line detector,
0:24.4	we thought it was a good time to revisit
0:26.4	another controversial crime-fighting technology.
0:29.8	The Electric Chair.
0:31.6	As a method of execution, this often
0:33.8	been seen as cruel and unreliable,
0:36.1	and it's fallen out of favor in recent decades.
0:39.0	But with the drugs used in lethal injections becoming
0:41.6	rarer and harder to obtain, electric chairs
0:44.5	aren't back in use.
0:46.2	Tennessee has executed five death row inmates
0:48.7	by Electric Chair since 2018.
0:51.2	And as this episode rears, South Carolina
0:53.8	is passing legislation to reintroduce the chair.
	...

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