Electric Chair

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Karl H

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Today a customer and I were talking about Stray Current and Bonding.I told him,under certain conditions,a male can experience ventricular fibrillation @ 75mA in .05 sec of contact.His response was,"If we can be electrocuted at such a low level,Why did they at times have such a difficult time electrocuting people in the electric chair?" My response,"I don't know, I've never even thought about intentionaly electrocuting someone!" lol
Now being Obsessive compulsive as I am.The rest of the day i kept wondering ,"did they use a series or parallel circuit?" Then i thought, "It would have been cheaper for the state. To have the condemned person, Touch a utility owned light pole,were they drive a ground rod and don't run a EGC to bond the pole.
Man, i need to spend alittle more time praying tonight! :grin:
Does anyone know how they did this?
 
Karl, try a Google search for 'electric chair design' and you will get a lot of info.

Most are web sites I do not feel comfortable linking to from Mike's site.

Keep in mind many of these sites have a political agenda so consider the source before you believe it all.
 
The issue of lethality of small amounts of current is that it CAN kill you, not that it WILL. When applied to an execution, the WILL part becomes of primary concern.

Realize that the electric chair as we know it was not invented specifically as a method of humane execution, but rather as a way for Thomas Edison to demonstrate the dangers of AC power as opposed to DC in his economic battle with Westinghouse and Tesla. He experimented with live animals using DC and tortured, but not killed, them in public, then changed to AC to finish them off. He even later filmed a live demonstration of killing an elephant, which took minutes to accomplish and was very disturbing (video clips are available on the web if interested, but be forewarned, they are not PC as far as animal rights goes). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_(elephant)

The decision to use AC for the first chair was made by a New York prison official who was on the Edison payroll. Westinghouse refused to supply generators to the prison system, Edison obliged with units from his lab. Condemned prisoners who were "volunteered" to demonstrate it had no idea what they were going to go through. After the first few tries, it was decided that the pain and suffering exhibited by the volunteers was too great, so they "upped the ante" so to speak until it was felt that the process was quick and "more humane". That is still very arguable.
 
There is a book called A Peep Into The Twentieth Century which was "co-authored" by the first person to be executed in an electric chair. It is a quick read and not very detailed, but it covers some of the scientific issues.
 
jim dungar said:
There is a book . . . which was "co-authored" by the first person to be executed in an electric chair.
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Amazing. I'll bet an autographed copy of that book would be priceless. ;)
 
Wow! that's pretty disturbing stuff.It looks as if Thomas and i have the same experience.Trying to communicate the dangers of electricity.While people tell me over and over "well i've been "HIT" several times and i'm ok." Not realizing the potential and circumstance.But, Thomas now,he went to extreme measures. I think i'll keep ending my debates with uneducated people by saying."Thank God your still here to tell me the stories how you've been "HIT" several times,Cause those that were'nt as fortunate as you, don't have the breath to debate me." I read somewhere that one person in the US dies everyday from an electrical hazzard.With all the precautions and education avalible today that just saddens me.
 
As I understand it, ventricular fibrillation occurs in a window and as the current increases, is no longer induced. Then heating of the flesh takes over as the predominate affect.
 
Karl H said:
Wow! that's pretty disturbing stuff.It looks as if Thomas and i have the same experience.Trying to communicate the dangers of electricity.
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Well... I don't think Mr. Edison was concerned about electrical safety one bit, really. As Jraef mentioned, his real goal was to demonize AC and portray it as unsafe in a futile attempt to get DC adopted as the predominant electrical infrastructure. Hence, his ghoulish desire to make sure that AC was used on the electric chair.

Ultimately, Tesla won the technological battle, but Edison won the PR battle and is commonly thought of as having "invented electricity", which is of course bunk. There was an excellent documentary on this recently... History Channel I think.
 
I believe it's series head to grounded (parralel) feet.... At 2000v for a minute - then a minute again. But hey - why not (if given the choice) go out with a "bang" - and use a fair amount of explosives. Quick enough not to know what happened. Maybe just fire them out of a 16" navy cannon. Nothing to bury either - just hose down the area after the mist and smoke settle.
 
The IEC did a lot of work, back in the seventies I think, to test at what current respiratory paralysis and fibrillation would occur. This was the foundation for the introduction of RCDs (then known as ELCBs).
From memory, they arrived at a sensitivity of 30mA and a disconnect time of 30ms as being a standard that would ensure life protection in all but the old or infirm, although more sensitive equipment soon became available.

For a piece of equipment to ensure not only death, but also sudden death, the current would have to be much higher, and I believe the level of 500mA was considered a level that would result in immediate cardiac arrest. There were other factors too, such as the passage of current through the body. Worst, I think, was from one hand/arm to the other, as the current passed directly through the heart/lung cavity. Arm to foot was almost as bad, but one foot to the other was relatively harmless (as far as cardiac arrest was concerend anyway.. :wink: ). When working on live conductors, always use your foot seems to be the watchword.... :D as ensuring the safety of people from electricity seems more productive......
 
There used to be a cracking site on electric chair construction, that was on the site run by Fred Leucter, that described their operation in detail. Then Fred went and did something very daft (google if you dont know), and the web site (and, in reality, Fred) is no more. Which is sad as the web site was very interesting. It also had stuff about other execution methods, from which I learned gems like the US army produced a book in (I think) 1915 which documented the drop height versus body weight for hanging, so you didnt get pople either not dying or having their head ripped clean off when the floor dropped...

Film survives of Edison killing elephants with electricity, it's on the DVD The rise and fall of Mr Death, but probably also on youtube.
 
I am one of those "survivors" who have been zapped several times, once by 480V right across the heart (in one hand, out through my back). I do NOT brag about it (at least not to lay persons) because I know exactly how much danger I was in at the time and feel extremely lucky to be alive.

An ironic thing about Edison's DC vs AC thing; the only electrocution death I have personally witnessed was a VFD technician who came into contact with the DC bus on a 600HP steel mill drive. Locked him up rigid, we had to push him off with a 2x4, but he was dead when he hit the floor. We weren't too sure how long he had been on there, nobody was around him for maybe 5 minutes prior. Grizzly scene really. This guy was not a rookie, he knew all the rules. Just got sloppy I guess, like I did (mine was a feedback from a foreign voltage through a control transformer to the load terminals of an open circuit breaker). One can never be too careful or check too many times.


..."Who's the Boss?" marathon,...
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LMAO!~
 
Another good book is 'Edison and the Electric Chair.' It focuses on Edison's campaign to discredit AC as being too dangerous, specifically through getting it used as a form of execution. In fact, in those days they did not yet have a word for death by electricity and Edison suggested that it be called getting 'Westinghoused.' :)
 
I had to rebuild and test the breaker for Old Sparky before it was used back in 1999. (I think). I recall it was 2400V or so and had very unuique trip devices, I wish I remmembered what the settings were. It was to be used to execute that guy who killed those college kids in Kissimee, FL.

I do have pictures from that execution, but I dont know how to post them or if anyone would want to see them for that matter.
 
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