Edison, Tesla and the Electric Chair (The Edison Story Part 2)

25:09An AC motor, a beautiful, efficient AC motor, like a true eureka moment. And Tesla says to his friend, no more will men be slaves to hard tasks. My motor will set them free. It will do the work of the world. That's one of those lines that if it was somebody else, I wouldn't believe that the guy said it. But I feel like Tesla is totally the guy who says that. I think he speaks in complete cryptic poetic sentences. I bet he said that all the time about his inventions. This just happens to be the one that's true, right? Every time he opens a door, he goes, Now men will no longer be slaves to hard tasks.

25:44Men will no longer have to open doors. So he makes it to the U.S. and he does what anyone would do in this situation. He goes to work for Edison. He's like, oh, Edison's the guy, right? But Edison is not interested in Tesla's AC motor because Edison has already made his mental decision that he is a DC man. So Tesla quits, gets a little funding, gets a patent on his AC motor. And pretty soon, who comes knocking at Tesla's door? George Westinghouse. So George Westinghouse, remember, he's seen the AC in Europe. He thinks that this is going to be the answer. So he pays Tesla$70 ,000 in cash. What an enormous amount at the time, right?

26:24And royalties on every future Tesla motor. They're already calling it a Tesla motor that Westinghouse sells. And Nikola Tesla, you know, he carefully saves and invests that$70 ,000 in cash. No, he does not. He is a Serbian poet genius. He starts to spend it, right? He moves into the Waldorf Astoria, the fanciest hotel in New York at the time. He wears tailored suits. He eats dinner every night at Delmonico's. I think it's like precisely at 8.10. Why? Nobody knows. He has 18 napkins delivered to him. A little bit of a germaphobe. Plus 18 is divisible by three. And he becomes this celebrity, right?

27:02People like Mark Twain come to hang out in Tesla's lab just to watch the electricity fly, the lightning bolts across the room. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River in New Jersey, Edison, our main character, come on. He's a very interesting, huge figure in the history of business and technology. And he is seeing his lead diminish, right? He was first in the world with the grid, with his DC grid. But now Westinghouse and AC Power are catching up. And there's this interesting question, right? Like, is Edison only Team DC because that's what his patents are, you know, strongest in, that's where he started?

27:44Or does he really believe that AC is dangerous? And I think he really believed AC is dangerous. Now, maybe it's motivated reasoning, right? No, but I think because he sees farther than most people, I think that what he saw was these wires will go into every home, every business, under every street. It will be on every street corner. And so he could probably see that, like, this will be the technology that people will directly interact with. And why not make it safe? And it is the case around this time that there are these instances where, like, you know, a kid will accidentally touch a downed AC wire and die.

28:20Like, that happens routinely. And, in fact, at a given voltage, AC is more dangerous than DC. In part, kind of amazingly, because the nature of AC in the human body is such that if you accidentally, like, grab an AC wire, something about the alternating current can, like, freeze your muscles so that you cannot let go and you just hold it until you die. So Edison feels like he needs to tell the world about the dangers of alternating current. And he starts to attack not just AC but Westinghouse. It starts in February of 1888. He publishes a booklet. Oh, crazy. This is the first shot in The War of the Currents.

29:03The booklet is called A Warning from the Edison Electric Light Company. 88 pages long. 88 pages long. A novella, let's say. And it lays out all the reasons ACO's bad. Like, yes, the danger, but also Edison says he owns all the relevant patents. And so look out, I'm going to shut you down. And also he points out that still Westinghouse hasn't figured out how to reliably produce an AC motor. Like he's, you know, working on producing Tesla's idea, but it's still in progress. But the booklet is just the beginning. And imagine Edison, you know, he sees the dangers, he fears that he is losing. And so he starts to, I would say, go too far, right?

29:44He secretly sponsors a guy who does these public displays that goes to, you know, college campuses, you know, as a public service announcement about deadly AC power. Harold Brown is his name. And he gets up on the stage and he reads a paper about the virtues of D.C. and the dangers of A.C. But all the time he's reading, the audience can see there is a dog cowering in a wooden crate. One time it was a 76-pound Newfoundland, right? So, like, this is why people have gathered. At one point, Brown turns his attention to the dog, to the Newfoundland. And he hooks wires to its back legs and front paws.

30:22And he starts delivering jolts of AC and then DC power back and forth. And then eventually Brown administers a deadly jolt of AC. And the dog dies, proving, he says to the crowd, that, you know, AC is more deadly. In secret, apparently Edison let Brown, like, do experiments on dogs, offering a reward for people to bring stray dogs to execute. You know, it was drawing crowds, but it wasn't quite working. So they start to use AC to electrocute calves, horses, just to show you, like, this is so dangerous. It can take down an animal larger than a human. And then they go from animals to people. What happens is the state of New York, someone in the state government of New York, decides that the state needs to modernize the way it executes convicted criminals.

31:14They'd been using hanging, death by hanging, which apparently goes wrong more than I thought. It's harder to hang people than I thought. And so somebody thinks, oh, well, electricity, that's this new, you know, high-tech thing. Maybe that will work better. And so somebody writes to Edison, you know, the Wizard of Menlo Park, the expert on electricity, and says, should we use electricity for state executions? And initially, Edison says, I oppose capital punishment. Don't bother me about this. Let me go invent things. But then he thinks about it some more and he gets back to him and he says, yes, electricity could work.

31:55Oh, and by the way, it should definitely be alternating current. And he even writes a letter where he says states should buy generators that are, quote, alternating machines manufactured principally in this country by George Westinghouse. Says it by name. I can't believe it. And it does make me sad because I know Edison is the hero of the story, as he is for this whole series. And generally so far, we've seen him make, I would say, pretty moral decisions about his technology. Right. And I mean, that's his whole vibe. Like, I am bringing magic to the world to make everyone better off. And this is one of those instances where maybe he's talked himself into it, that this is the right thing to do.

32:41Maybe he thinks that I can't bully my way out of this with lawyers and patents. But this is the first time I've seen him really go after a competitor in a way that is vicious. It's bad, right? It's bad. New York takes Edison's advice. Of course, Westinghouse isn't going to sell the state of New York generators, but they actually buy used Westinghouse generators and they build a few electric chairs, the first electric chairs. And on March 29th of 1889, a man named William Kemmler, who the New York Times calls an alcoholic vegetable peddler in the slums of Buffalo, he wakes up from a drinking binge, starts arguing with his girlfriend, Matilda Ziegler, accuses her of cheating on him.

33:30And then, according to the Times, when the argument reached a peak, Kemmler calmly went to the barn, grabbed a hatchet, and returned to the house. And he killed Matilda Ziegler with a hatchet. It's pretty clear he did it. He says he did it. There's a lot of evidence that he did it. And he's convicted, and he's sentenced to death. And he's on his way to being the first person ever executed by the state with electricity. In fact, somebody invents the word electrocution right around this time. But of course, Westinghouse doesn't want this to happen. He doesn't want his machines killing a man in this very public way.

34:09And so Westinghouse hires a lawyer, this really famous lawyer, to defend Kemmler, to argue in particular that killing someone in the electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment. By the way, the electric chair was actually invented by a New York dentist who happened to be a Quaker. and he had seen someone accidentally touch a generator and be instantly killed. And he thought, oh, this would be a more humane alternative to hanging. So anyway, on July 23rd, 1889, Edison is called to testify in this case over whether killing someone in an electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment. Edison, as I mentioned in the previous episode, is largely deaf.

34:53He goes in to testify, and the lawyer basically has to like yell into Edison's good ear so Edison can hear the question. The New York Times said you could hear it from the street, although maybe that's poetic license. Here, we have the transcript here. The lawyer says, I won't do the yelling part, do you believe that an artificial current can be produced which will cause death instantly and painlessly when scientifically applied? And Edison says, that is my firm belief. His exchange, his testimony runs in the New York Times under the headline, Testimony of the Wizard. And then the subhead says...

35:28He is positive that an alternating current of 1 ,000 volts would surely kill a man. Can't buy that kind of publicity. Anti-publicity. Edison tried to buy it, but in this case, he didn't have to buy it. And in fact, Kemmler loses the case. The judge says the state can execute him in the electric chair. And so the day comes. It's August 6, 1890. 90. Kemmler gets woken up at 5 a.m., puts on a suit, has a black and white check bow tie. They shave part of his head so that they can put an electrode there, you know, to make contact with the skin. At the last minute, actually, the warden has to cut through Kemmler's, like, shirt tail so that their electrode can make contact with his back.

36:11And Kemmler seems collected. The warden seems nervous, actually. The warden seems kind of shaky, but Kemmler is collected. Kemmler actually says to the warden, take your time, do it right. And the warden attaches the electrodes, straps Kemmler's arms to the chair. He actually puts this sort of leather mask on Kemmler's face that straps his head back into the chair. And then the warden says, goodbye, William, which is the signal. It's the signal for someone to turn on the power to the chair. And they do that. They turn on the power. Kemmler's body goes rigid, just like a bronze statue, somebody said.

36:49And they leave the power on for 17 seconds. And there's a doctor standing right there monitoring it. And he says, he's dead. That's enough. And they turn off the power and power goes off. And then they look at Kemmler and they see that he's still breathing. He's not dead. People start screaming. Someone faints. So they turn on the power again. And this time they leave it on, not for 17 seconds, but for several minutes. It burns Kemmler's flesh. You can smell it, apparently, in the room. His clothes catch on fire and somebody puts it out. And then finally, they turn off the power. And this time, Kemmler is dead.

37:30And that dentist who invented the electric chair was, in fact, one of the witnesses, was in the room at the time. And after it was over, what he said was, quote, we live in a higher civilization from this day. This is history. We'll be back in a moment.

37:59This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. There's something interesting about how seamlessly certain tools fit into daily life. Apple Card is one of those things. It can be applied for right in the wallet app on iPhone, and approval can happen in minutes. So it's ready to use immediately with Apple Pay. I'm so glad the days of finding my wallet, fishing out the credit card, using it, putting it back in my wallet, or oops, maybe I use cash, where's the ATM? Enough. The first time I used Apple Pay on my phone with my Apple Card, I was like, this is the future. There's no going back. With Apple Card, purchases earn daily cash up to 3 % with no points to track and no waiting for rewards.

38:44It's simply daily cash back that I earn on every purchase. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet, if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over time without any extra effort. Because Apple Card lives in the Wallet app, it's always accessible on iPhone and can be used with Apple Pay at over 85 % of merchants in the U.S. And the security of Face ID and Touch ID prevents unauthorized purchases, whether using iPhone or Apple Watch. To explore it yourself, you can apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval, savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility.

39:31Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, member FDIC, terms and more at applecard.com. Ask yourself, what are your best people spending their time on right now? Expense reports, receipt chasing, month-end close that takes weeks? You become what you spend on, and that's not what you're building toward. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that eliminates that work before it starts. AI agents that handle the manual stuff automatically, so your team can spend their time on what actually compounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. If your business runs on five different apps, 12 browser tabs, and one spreadsheet that everyone's afraid to touch, it's probably time for Odoo.

40:17Odoo is an all-in-one business management software that connects every part of your business into one powerful, easy-to-use platform. So instead of wasting time switching between disconnected systems, your entire business works together in real time. Your team moves faster, your data stays accurate, and you can actually focus on growing your business. Let one unified system run your entire business. From the first opportunity to the final payment, everything works together in one place. Whether you're a small business or managing a large operation, Odoo gives you one flexible platform built to grow with you.

40:53Try for free today at odoo.com slash iHeartRadio. That's odoo.com slash iHeartRadio.

41:12That is the end of the ads, and now we're going back to the show. So Temmler has been executed. And in fact, his death is on the front page of newspapers around the country, all talking about how horrible it was. But the news doesn't have the effect on public opinion that Edison frankly hoped it would. Right. Everybody doesn't suddenly say, oh, we can't have AC power. It's obviously too dangerous. they basically just said, oh, yeah, do not strap me into a chair and run a thousand volts of AC power through my body. And, you know, in fact, the key audience here is not the mass public, right? It's the government officials who are the ones deciding what kind of power plant, what kind of power system to buy.

41:58Yeah. And you don't want to have to build a DC power plant every six or seven blocks. Like you think, well, I can just put one big power plants and high power transmission lines out and we'll put safety measures in effect. So it kind of makes sense that if you're thinking of it that way, you are going to go with the more efficient option. And the last big moment in the fight happens at Niagara Falls, actually, which, by the way, how many A's are there at Niagara? Three, two. It's Niagara. Oh, OK. I didn't know. I kept spelling it wrong. And I get the little line in Google Docs. It's Niagara. So the final moment in the War of the Currents, it happens at Niagara Falls.

42:44Because, you know, they're like these businessmen and bankers looking at this beautiful falls and thinking, look at all that kinetic energy. We could definitely spend some turbines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they decide they are going to build what is by far, by far the biggest power plant in the world. And so when they're making the decision, like, DC is still a possibility. Actually, Lord Kelvin of absolute zero fame says go with DC. But they go with AC. They use Westinghouse generators. And it is really striking what happens there. As soon as this is happening, as this is happening, big power-intensive companies see that it's happening and start moving their operations to be next to Niagara Falls, essentially.

43:26Like a striking one is the Aluminum Company of America. Alcoa. A.K.A. Alcoa. Takes a ton of electricity to make. Right, still, right? Still, where aluminum plants are around the world is where there is cheap electric power because that is the big expensive input, right? And so cheap, abundant power from Niagara Falls and places like it is truly what allows aluminum, for example, to become this cheap, abundant, essential 20th century material. You know, soda cans, aluminum siding, airplanes, right? You need cheap electricity to get this. And, like, go back to the beginning of the show, right? When I was saying, I don't care about the light bulb, I care about the grid, this is what I'm talking about, right?

44:11Like, what matters is the grid. What matters is cheap, reliable, abundant electric power. This is the second industrial revolution. This is the great transformation that creates the 20th century. And, like, go even bigger, right? Like, human material progress for all time foundationally rests on harnessing energy. Like, you can go all the way back to fire, the first big one, right? And then you can go to the industrial revolution, right? Basically, coal and the steam engine are the bedrock of it. And then now you have electricity, this next huge step function in human material well-being. And you can see, because of the aluminum plant, how cheap electricity makes aluminum cheaper, which makes cans cheaper and eventually airplanes cheaper and all the things you build out of aluminum.

45:02You can see that fundamental efficiency travel through the entire industrial system. Yes, everything, right? All factories are going to switch from steam power to electricity because it's better. And it takes decades. You see it like well into the 20th century. You're still seeing productivity gains that are the result of electricity. And now so we have Edison, right? This is a story about Edison. And he plays a super interesting role in this story, right? Like, on the one hand, he is the guy for electricity, builds the first real grid, makes the breakthrough, makes it happen fast, gets the money.

45:41But also, right after that, he bets wrong in what, like, frankly, at least in retrospect, seems like a pretty obvious mistake, right? Like, he bets on D.C. when A.C., it seems clearly like it was the better pick. It's interesting. One of the things I love about business history is that there's so much logic and numbers in the whole thing. But then there's always a moment where ego steps in. And I do think there is, like, this is a man who has not fumbled the ball for most of his career. A few mistakes here and there. I kind of fumbled it on the phonograph. Yeah. But, like, he's, like, he's famous, you know?

46:20The most famous. The most famous. And he's getting used to using that fame to get exactly what he wants. and he just steps one step too far. Yeah, like he's too attached, right? Like he was too in love with his original idea. And it is amazing. Like Edison was just so focused on DC. Literally Tesla was working for him. Tesla had the idea for the AC motor. Like it was right there, but Edison couldn't let go of his original idea. And this is like a classic business story. I couldn't think of like of a perfect analogy. I mean, like, kind of like Sony with Betamax, which came before VHS, but not exactly.

47:00I mean, one that's really fun, if not exactly the same, but that I like. Did you know that in the year 2000, Blockbuster Video had the chance to buy Netflix for$50 million? Oh, could have sent VHS tapes through the mail, yeah. Right. So, right. At that time, Netflix was DVDs by mail. and Blockbuster was like, that's some weirdo niche business. For cinephiles, we've got thousands of video stores. We make all this money on late fees. We're not going to do it. And it's easy to mock in retrospect when people make these kind of mistakes. But like, if you're Edison, to go back to Edison, right? In a way, Edison maybe had to be so attached to his idea, right?

47:41Like, think of what he's deciding to do, right? He's thinking, not only am I going to perfect the light bulb in a world where people have been working on it for decades and haven't done it. I'm going to build the world's first grid when that doesn't exist. I'm going to dig up Manhattan and I'm going to do it in four years, right? So maybe to be that audacious, you have to be so full of confidence that you don't have any doubt, you know, that you stick to beliefs even when you're wrong. When you have an invention and you're out there competing on what's the best invention, that's one thing. But when you're in one of these standards wars where you realize there will only be one winner, And Edison was probably familiar with this, you know, on the railroad, like there has to be a certain width of the railroad gauge, right?

48:26And like someone's going to win because it only makes sense to have one winner. And so, you know, we can debate his reasons, but it is logical to say, if my confidence can make my standard win, then I am going to show no doubt whatsoever, even when the evidence is to the contrary. I'm going to be the winner who takes all. So he didn't win, of course. And in fact, even before that power plant at Niagara got built, J.P. Morgan, you know, the original guy who made Edison's power grid dream come true, J.P. Morgan saw which way the wind was blowing, a thing he was good at, right? Not a man who got emotionally attached.

49:11And he merged Edison's company, Edison General Electric, with another company called Thompson Houston, which was in the AC business. Of course, Edison hated the deal, right? He didn't want to be in business with a company that was doing AC. But he lost control of Edison General Electric by that point. And in fact, after the merger, Edison General Electric became known as just General Electric. GE. GE. And Edison basically walked away. But the one thing, like we're going to leave Edison here, but the one thing I want to say, and this is kind of setting him up for the next time when we'll talk about Edison's final big triumph.

49:49Edison didn't look back. Like he always thought the next thing is going to be even bigger. And he thought that at this point. He thought that when he walked away from electricity. And next time we'll talk about what was Edison's last big triumph, which was the movies, moving pictures. And specifically, the way Edison came to control the entire American film industry, despite the fact that he did not invent the movie camera. Becoming his style, right? His style. Before we go, we should talk about the end of Nikola Tesla's story. Tesla, of course, was the man who could have made Edison the A.C. king.

50:26We wouldn't be telling the story in this case. We'd just be like, he's a genius all the way through. Edison, too stubborn to listen. When we last left Tesla, he had sold the rights to his AC motor patent to George Westinghouse. And he's living the high life at Delmonico's with his 18 napkins, hanging out with Mark Twain. And a key turning point comes from a few years later. It's 1891, right? George Westinghouse is in a little bit of financial trouble. He thinks he can win. He thinks the Tesla motor stole the way. But, you know, cash flow, right? It's always the cash flow. Financial crisis, loans are getting called in.

50:58So Westinghouse goes to see Tesla in New York. And remember, Tesla's supposed to get a royalty on every single AC motor that Westinghouse sells. But at this point, they're still perfecting it. And Westinghouse says to Tesla, will you give up your royalties so I can keep control of my company and keep developing your motor? And Tesla, according to his autobiography, says to Westinghouse, Mr. Westinghouse, you will save your company so that you can develop my inventions. Here is your contract and here is my contract. I will tear both of them to pieces and you will no longer have any troubles from my royalties.

51:35And he tears the contract up. Again, because it's Tesla, I believe it. Legend, right? Iconic. And a huge mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake because Tesla would go on to come up with other ideas. He was apparently working on how to transmit electricity through the air, like to basically take the next leap beyond the grid. Built this giant tower out on Long Island, right? Looked like a mushroom. There are stories about, like, did he succeed? Like, did it actually happen? But it doesn't matter because the money wasn't there, right? None of his projects worked out. He wasn't making money. He had to move out of the Waldorf Astoria and into a cheaper hotel.

52:19Hotel New Yorker still stands. Room 3227. Not divisible by three, I checked. The last two numbers are, does that count? He was on such hard times that he couldn't even get a room divisible by three. He's like, do you have one two doors down? No. How about one door down the other way? There's a plaque on the hotel room door to this day. And in fact, if you go to the basement of the New Yorker hotel, you can see some of the personal effects that he left in this room. Which you have done, yes? I have done this. Would you leave anything interesting? No, it's just like knickknacks and pictures of him.

52:53Because at the time, like, he was still this famous genius. and even before a certain person would name his company after him Tesla like there was this Tesla cult and to this day you can go see Tesla Corner near Bryant Park in Manhattan you can see where his lab was fairly close to here I think in Midtown Manhattan you can go see his personal effects at the New Yorker Hotel there is still this like vibe of this poet genius who could have who maybe could have solved this next problem that wasn't solved. I will say that the last notable thing in Tesla's life is a pigeon. It was a homing pigeon, had a band on its leg, but Tesla had no idea where it came from or who had owned it.

53:41And it would come to visit him in his hotel room high above Manhattan on the west side. And so Tesla would start to feed this pigeon, and the bird would come and go, and this became the thing Tesla was focused on at the end. And eventually, like the pigeon stopped coming back and Tesla told his biographer, when that pigeon died, something went out of my life. I know. Up to that time, I knew with a certainty that I would complete my work no matter how ambitious my program. But when that something went out of my life, I knew my life's work was finished. That's sad, man. It's a sad end for a genius.

54:20And he died in 1943. Poor but not forgotten. So that's the end of the show today. I would recommend this book, Empires of Light by Jill Jones, two N's, which was, it's a great book all about this war of the currents. It was a key source for the show today. We'll be back next week with the last episode in our Edison series. That is the story of Edison and the movies. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Is that the Muppets? I don't know. That's my generic old-timey. Our showrunner is Ryan Dilley. Our producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. And our engineer is Sarah Bruguer.

55:00I'm Jacob Goldstein. I'm Robert Smith. We'll be back next week with another episode of Business History. A show about the history of business. Robert Smith, as you know, there is nowhere in Pushkin's office to make a video, to make a video podcast, which is unfortunate. We tried, and it was described as two gray men in a gray box. And reasonably so. Fortunately for us, in an amazing coincidence, literally down the hall from Pushkin's office, there is the showroom of a company called Buzzy Space. This is a company, it's where we're sitting right now. And what they do is they design furniture and acoustic solutions that make, I'm reading here, workplaces more comfortable, more creative, and more fun.

55:41I would even say cozy. Their furniture is like sort of curved and interesting colors and I guess keeps things quiet. Yes. Honestly, I wish our office was this showroom. You can find more at Buzzy.space. That's B-U-Z-Z-I dot space. Did you ever notice how you spend hours shopping online only to pause at checkout because you wonder if you trusted enough to hit buy now? Agentic Commerce is testing that moment more than ever. That's where PayPal comes in. With 25 years of checkouts, 400 million consumer accounts globally, and the benefit of fraud protection. So no matter where a purchase starts, it ends with trust.

56:24Built for payments, growth, and agentic. PayPal Open. Built for all business. Visit paypalopen.com. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end close, it's time to get Brex AF, a gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird.

57:03Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.