<P> In the late 1870s to early 1880s, spread of arc lighting, a type of brilliant outdoor street lighting that required high voltages in the range of 3000 - 6000 volts, was followed by one story after another in newspapers about how the high voltages used were killing people, usually unwary linemen, a strange new phenomenon that seemed to instantaneously strike a victim dead without leaving a mark . One of these accidents, in Buffalo, New York on August 7, 1881, led to the inception of the electric chair . That evening a drunken dock worker, looking for the thrill of a tingling sensation he had noticed before, managed to sneak his way into a Brush Electric Company arc lighting power house and grabbed the brush and ground of a large electric dynamo . He died instantly . The coroner who investigated the case brought it up at a local Buffalo scientific society . Another member, Alfred P. Southwick, a dentist who had a technical background, thought some application could be found for the curious phenomenon . </P> <P> Southwick, local physician George E. Fell, and the head of the Buffalo ASPCA performed a series of experiments electrocuting hundreds of stray dogs, experimenting with animals in water, out of water, electrode types and placement, and conductive material until they came up with a repeatable method to euthanize animals using electricity . Southwick went on in the early 1880s to advocate that this method be used as a more humane replacement for hanging in capital cases, coming to national attention when he published his ideas in scientific journals in 1882 and 1883 . He worked out calculations based on the dog experiments, trying to develop a scaled - up method that would work on humans . Early on in his designs he adopted a modified version of the dental chair as a way to restrain the condemned, a device that from then on would be referred called the electric chair . </P> <P> After a series of botched hangings in the United States, there was mounting criticism of this form of capital punishment and the death penalty in general . In 1886, newly elected New York State governor David B. Hill set up a three - member death penalty commission, which was chaired by the human rights advocate and reformer Elbridge Thomas Gerry and included New York lawyer and politician Matthew Hale and Southwick, to investigate a more humane means of execution . </P> <P> The commission members surveyed the history of execution and sent out a fact - finding questionnaire to government officials, lawyers, and medical experts all around the state asking for their opinion . The questionnaires were a bit skewed because they pushed forward electrocution and did not include the choice of abolishing the death penalty, but, despite that, a slight majority of respondents recommended hanging over electrocution, and a few recommended the abolition of capital punishment . The commission also contacted electrical experts, including Thomson - Houston Electric Company's Elihu Thomson (who recommended high voltage AC connected to the head and the spine) and the inventor Thomas Edison (who also recommended AC, as well as using a Westinghouse generator). They also attended electrocutions of dogs by George Fell who had worked with Southwick in the early 1880s experiments . Fell was conducting further experiments, electrocuting anesthetized dissected dogs trying to discern exactly how electricity killed a subject . </P>

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