Harold P. Brown

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Harold P. Brown was the American inventor of the electric chair. He was hired by Thomas Edison to help develop the chair after he wrote an editorial to the New York Post describing how a young boy was killed after accidentally touching an exposed telegraph wire using alternating current.

At the time, Edison and his direct current system was competing with the Westinghouse electrical company, which used alternating current. New York State in 1886 established a committee to determine a new, more humane system of execution to replace hanging. Neither Edison nor Westinghouse wanted their electrical system to be chosen because they feared that consumers would not want the same type of electricity used to kill criminals in their homes.

In order to prove that AC electricity was better for executions, Brown and Edison killed many animals, including a circus elephant, while testing their prototypes. They also held executions of animals for the press in order to ensure that AC current was associated with electrocution. It was at these events that the term electrocution was coined. Most of their experiments were conducted at Edison's West Orange, New Jersey laboratory in 1888.

Though the campaign to desligitimate the alternating current system failed the AC electric chair was adopted by the committee in 1889.