Editing Electric chair (section)

====New York Medico-Legal Commission====
The bill itself contained no details on the type or amount of electricity that should be used and the New York Medico-Legal Society, an informal society composed of doctors and lawyers, was given the task of determining these factors. In September 1888, a committee was formed and recommended 3000 volts, although the type of electricity, [[direct current]] (DC) or [[alternating current]] (AC), was not determined, and since tests up to that point had been done on animals smaller than a human (dogs), some members were unsure that the lethality of AC had been conclusively proven.<ref name="Richard Moran 2007, page 102">Richard Moran, Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group – 2007, page 102</ref>
[[File:Harold Pitney Brown edison electrocute horse 1888 New York Medico-Legal Journal vol 6 issue 4.png|thumbnail|Harold Brown demonstrating the killing power of AC to the New York Medico-Legal Society by electrocuting a horse at Thomas Edison's West Orange laboratory.]]
At this point, the state's efforts to design the electric chair became intermixed with what has come to be known as the [[war of the currents]], a competition between [[Thomas Edison]]'s direct current power system and [[George Westinghouse]]'s alternating current based system. The two companies had been competing commercially since 1886 and a series of events had turned it into an all-out media war in 1888. The committee head, [[Neurology|neurologist]] [[Frederick Peterson]], enlisted the services of [[Harold P. Brown]] as a consultant. Brown had been on his own crusade against alternating current after the shoddy installation of pole-mounted AC arc lighting lines in New York City had caused several deaths in early 1888. Peterson had been an assistant at Brown's July 1888 public electrocution of dogs with AC at Columbia College, an attempt by Brown to prove AC was more deadly than DC.<ref name="Richard Moran 2007, page 102" /> Technical assistance in these demonstrations was provided by Thomas Edison's West Orange laboratory and there grew to be some form of collusion between Edison Electric and Brown.<ref>Craig Brandon, The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History, McFarland – 1999, pages 70 and 261</ref><ref>Jill Jonnes, Empires Of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, And The Race To Electrify The World, Random House – 2004, page 166</ref><ref name="W. Bernard Carlson 2003, page 285">W. Bernard Carlson, Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, Cambridge University Press – 2003, page 285</ref> Back at West Orange on December 5, 1888, Brown set up an experiment with members of the press, members of the Medico-Legal Society including Elbridge Gerry who was also chairman of the death penalty commission, and Thomas Edison looking on. Brown used alternating current for all of his tests on animals larger than a human, including 4 calves and a lame horse, all dispatched with 750 volts of AC.<ref>Mark Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death, Bloomsbury Publishing USA – 2009, pages 152–155</ref> Based on these results the Medico-Legal Society recommended the use of 1000–1500 volts of alternating current for executions and newspapers noted the AC used was half the voltage used in the power lines over the streets of American cities. Westinghouse criticized these tests as a skewed self-serving demonstration designed to be a direct attack on alternating current and accused Brown of being in the employ of Edison.<ref>Craig Brandon The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History page 82</ref>

At the request of death penalty commission chairman Gerry, Medico-Legal Society members; [[electrotherapy]] expert Alphonse David Rockwell, [[Carlos Frederick MacDonald]], and Columbia College professor Louis H. Laudy, were given the task of working out the details of electrode placement.<ref name="Terry S. Reynolds 1989, pages 19-28">Terry S. Reynolds, Theodore Bernstein, Edison and "The Chair", Technology and Society Magazine, [[Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers]] (Volume 8, Issue 1) March 1989, pages 19 – 28</ref><ref>Mark Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death, Bloomsbury Publishing USA – 2009, pages 225</ref> They again turned to Brown to supply the technical assistance. Brown asked Edison Electric Light to supply equipment for the tests and treasurer Francis S. Hastings (who seemed to be one of the primary movers at the company trying to portray Westinghouse as a peddler of death dealing AC current<ref name="W. Bernard Carlson 2003, page 285" />) tried to obtain a Westinghouse AC generator for the test but found none could be acquired.<ref name="Terry S. Reynolds 1989, pages 19-28" /> They ended up using Edison's West Orange laboratory for the animal tests they conducted in mid-March 1889. Superintendent of Prisons [[Austin E. Lathrop]] asked Brown to design the chair, but Brown turned down the offer.<ref name="Terry S. Reynolds 1989, pages 19-28" /> [[George Fell]] drew up the final designs for a simple oak chair and went against the Medico-Legal Society recommendations, changing the position of the electrodes to the head and the middle of the back.<ref name="autogenerated4" /> Brown did take on the job of finding the generators needed to power the chair. He managed to surreptitiously acquire three Westinghouse AC generators that were being decommissioned with the help of Edison and Westinghouse's chief AC rival, the [[Thomson-Houston Electric Company]], a move that made sure that Westinghouse's equipment would be associated with the first execution.<ref name="books.google.com">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1EOgAwAAQBAJ&q=harold+brown++%22edison+and+Thomson-Houston%22&pg=PA195|title=Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death|first=Mark|last=Essig|date=October 1, 2005|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA|isbn=9780802777102|via=Google Books}}</ref> The electric chair was built by [[Edwin Davis (executioner)|Edwin F. Davis]], the first "[[state electrician]]" ([[executioner]]) for the State of New York.<ref>Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: an American history, Harvard University Press – 2009, pages 194–195</ref>