Sitting in the Hot Seat Quiz | Specialized History

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. The development of the electric chair was spurred on by two factors - the cruelty of hanging as a means of execution and the campaigning of which noted inventor?

Answer: Thomas Edison

Chapter 352 of the Laws was enacted in 1886 which enabled the New York State Government to assemble a commission to investigate and identify a more humane way in which to carry out capital punishment. To this point the favoured method was hanging but the downsides of this option were the length of time it took for the prisoner to die and the amount of pain that was inflicted upon the condemned person.
Thomas Edison was the founder of Edison General Electric. His organisation had, in 1882, established the first electrical utility industry. When he heard of the commission and that one of the options put forward was death by electric current he became an advocate and a powerful campaigner for the method. He was most insistent that alternating current be the appliance for this purpose. Edison's motives for this, however, were not without flaw.

Sources: http://www.ccadp.org/electricchair.htm
http://targetstudy.com/knowledge/invention/124/electric-chair.html

2. What was the occupation of Alfred P. Southwick, the man who introduced the concept of an electric chair? (Hint: His job and a chair are relevant).

Answer: Dentist

Dr Alfred Southwick was one of the members appointed to the commission created by the New York State Government to investigate a more humane method of carrying out the death penalty. His appointment to this commission was not by accident. About five years earlier he'd witnessed a drunken man touch the terminals of an electrical generator. He was staggered as to how quickly the man died and, it appeared, without pain. Southwick passed his observations onto the State Senator (and his friend) David McMillan, who in turn advised the Governor, David B. Hill.
Southwick was a dentist based in Buffalo, New York and the chair was an integral part of his day to day work. It was a natural extension then for him to put forward the idea that the chair be the ideal instrument for these executions. When Chapter 489 established electrocution as the means of execution in 1888 Southwick commented "We live in a higher civilisation from this day on".

Sources: http://www.ccadp.org/electricchair.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Southwick

3. The establishment of the electric chair enveloped two high profile providers of electricity in a public smear campaign. Which of the following was one of those inventors?

Answer: George Westinghouse

Thomas Edison had created the first electrical utility in 1882 and he chose to provide his service using direct current (DC). Edison had a number of issues with this. Firstly, DC required a lot of thick electrical cabling to deliver its product. This became a serious concern in 1887 when a group of French "speculators" had cornered the copper market and pushed the price of copper through the roof. Another issue was that Edison's ability to deliver the product was only extended to within a few miles of his generators. The major problem, however, was that George Westinghouse had developed his alternating current (AC) technology which was likely to prove to be both more flexible and economically superior to Edison's initiative.
Edison's approach was to paint AC as the "killer current". One of the ways he did this was by pushing to have AC as the choice of current for the electric chair. In this way he could "sell" the view that it was (a) dangerous and (b) linked with the spectre of the death penalty and, hopefully, reduce the saleability of alternating current. So began the "current wars".

Sources: http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/4/508.extract
http://inventors.about.com/od/hstartinventions/a/Electric_Chair.htm

4. The term "electrocution" is a portmanteau (a new word formed by joining parts of two others) of "electric" and "current".

Answer: False

The word electrocution is a portmanteau, but the words used to create it are "electro" and "(exe)cution". Prior to the establishment of the electric chair there did not exist any word to characterise death by electric shock, whether that death be accidental or by design (as in an execution or suicide). The word was incorporated within Chapter 489 of the 1888 enactment of the legislation to utilise the electric chair to carry out the State's executions.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocution

5. The "current wars" prevailed between two electricity suppliers in the lead up to the establishment of the electric chair. What role did the inventor Harold P. Brown play in this?

Answer: He was hired by the Edison General Electric as a researcher and designer

Thomas Edison, who was engaged in a battle for market share in electrical services with George Westinghouse, had heard that Brown had written a rather poignant letter to "The New York Post" in which he had outlined how a young boy had been killed when he came in contact with an exposed wire carrying alternating current (AC). Brown had recommended that limits be placed on the size of the voltage that lines transmitting AC be allowed to carry. As Edison's operation was based around direct current (DC) he employed Brown and set him two tasks - to design an electric chair and conduct public experiments on live animals to advertise how easily AC could kill. The exhibitions did show that AC killed quickly and that those animals that were charged with DC were not killed but left in a tortured state. In a roundabout and twisted sense this was a way to show the public that DC was the safer alternative.

Sources: http://inventors.about.com/od/hstartinventions/a/Electric_Chair.htm
http://www.ccadp.org/electricchair.htm

6. After identifying electrocution as the most humane way of executing the death penalty which of the following mediums was also given serious consideration before settling on the electric chair?

Answer: Tank of Water

Once legislature had been passed to adopt electrocution the commission put the onus as to how the law should be implemented on the Medico-Legal Society of New York. They appointed Dr Fred Peterson of Columbia to conduct further research into the matter and deliver their findings. Peterson, at the time, was an assistant to Harold Brown, employed by Edison General Electric. Apart from discarding the water tank as being too cumbersome, they also recommended that an option to use a rubberised table be overlooked.

Sources: http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/state/commissioners/docscommis2.htm
http://www.ccadp.org/electricchair.htm

7. In its early days a prisoner executed by way of the electric chair was described as being "westinghoused"?

Answer: True

Ultimately, Thomas Edison's campaign to bring down the Westinghouse operation through the so called "current wars" did not succeed, but the smear campaign was not without its successes, some mud did stick. The irony in this is that when the electric execution law came into full effect (January 1, 1889) George Westinghouse was one of the strongest campaigners against it. When the prisons approached him for alternate current generators he refused to sell to them. Thomas Edison stepped in and purchased them via a third party. When the first prisoners were sentenced to death by the chair Westinghouse funded their appeals and the subsequent appeals to higher courts on the basis that it was a "cruel and unusual" punishment. Harold Brown then stepped forward and gave testimony on behalf of the State of New York that electrocution was both swift and painless. The State won the appeals.

Sources: http://inventors.about.com/od/hstartinventions/a/Electric_Chair.htm
http://targetstudy.com/knowledge/invention/124/electric-chair.html

8. If performed correctly, which of the following would be the first to occur in an execution of the death penalty by electric chair?

Answer: Unconsciousness

The procedure in preparing the condemned person involves shaving their arms, legs and head, which are then strapped securely into the chair. A damp sponge, which will act as a better conductor, is placed on the head. Two thousand volts are passed through the prisoner (twice). The first should render the condemned unconscious and then brain dead. The second charge is aimed at destroying the body's vital organs. Death, in most cases, is caused by the overstimulation of the heart.

Sources: http://targetstudy.com/knowledge/invention/124/electric-chair.html

9. In its first century of use, apart from the USA, which of the following countries is the only other to use the electric chair to execute capital punishment?

Answer: The Philippines

When the electric chair was first used in the Philippines in 1924 it was still under partial US occupation. The Philippine government eventually phased out the chair and the last time it was employed there was in 1976.
Even in the United States the chair is no longer seen as an acceptable method of carrying out the death penalty. Most states have now deemed it a "cruel and unusual" punishment and have moved toward lethal injection as the preferred option. Several states however, offer electrocution as an alternative to lethal injection and some condemned prisoners have been known to choose this option as a way of making a final statement.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_chair

10. What was the outcome of the first prisoner strapped to the electric chair for execution?

Answer: He was killed after a second charge

The first person who was sentenced to death under the Electrical Execution Law was Joseph Chappleau for poisoning his neighbour's cows. Chappleau, however, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. For killing his girlfriend with an axe, William Kemmler was the first person to be delivered to and executed by the electric chair. It didn't go well. The first jolt, which lasted seventeen seconds did not do the job. In a case of overcompensating for the first mistake prison officials electrocuted Kemmler a second time, this time for seventy seconds, which also led to the prisoner's flesh being seared. The whole ordeal took eight minutes to complete. George Westinghouse remarked "They could have done better with an axe".

Source: http://www.ccadp.org/electricchair.htm

Source: Author pollucci19

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Sitting in the Hot Seat Trivia Quiz

The electric chair, often referred to as the hot seat, has been a symbol of the death penalty in the US for many years. The main focus of this quiz is how it came into being.

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>