Electric Chair | War of the Currents | S21-E1

American Innovations

Audible

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

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2019

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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.

Still, the chair stuck around. And Kemmler’s execution proved to be a pivotal moment in the history of capital punishment. But if you pull back just slightly, you’ll see that the story of the electric chair was just one small chapter in another story — a much larger story — that would come to define the world we live in.

This other story involved 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. And it would come to be called the War of the Currents.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an episode of a Wondery Plus exclusive series.
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0:15.0	This episode of American Innovations contains some violent content and is not suitable for everyone. Please be advised.
0:29.0	It's early morning on August 6, 1890.
0:33.2	And inside Auburn prison in upstate New York,
0:36.6	one man is preparing to meet his maker.
0:39.8	A prisoner named William Kemler
0:41.9	is led from his dark cramped cell down a short hallway by the warden, Charles Durston, toward the death chamber.
0:49.0	Two years ago, Kemler became convinced his girlfriend T Tilly Ziggler, was cheating on him.
0:55.2	After a week-long, boozed-soaked bender, he strode up behind Ziggler as she washed the dishes
1:01.6	and killed her with a hatchet in front of her four-year-old daughter.
1:06.0	He chopped away at Ziggler over two dozen times.
1:09.6	He then dropped the weapon and walked slowly towards the front of the house, covered in blood and pieces of
1:15.6	Ziegler's skull and brain matter.
1:17.9	His landlady stood speechless in the hallway at the sight of him.
1:21.7	Kemler stared at her blankly.
1:23.6	I've killed her.
1:24.8	I had to do it.
1:25.8	One of us had to die.
1:27.8	I'll take the rope for it.
	...

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