You know who sucks? Thomas Edison. ’Ol boy is arguably the most undeserving “inventor” in American world history.
Don’t believe me? Not only is Edison believed to have lifted plans for his most famous reveal, the light bulb, from his broke, one-time assistant, a true lightning seer by the name of Nikola Tesla. No, no, wait – maybe it was Humphrey Davy, or J.W. Starr, or even Jean Foucault, all forgotten inventors, from whom Ed maybe snatched the idea of the light bulb. Wait! No. Maybe it’s German mechanic Heinrich Goebel, who probably invented the light bulb in 1854 (and who even tried selling to thing to Edison, who scoffed at the invention until Goebel croaked, after which Edison bought his patent), that really should go down as Edison’s victim No. 1.
Videos by VICE
But Edison didn’t stop at solely swindling humans. What does the Wizard of Menlo Park do just to prove AC, or alternating current, electrical power distributions couldn’t hold candles – and at considerable bodily risk, at that – to his DC, or direct current, option, by then U.S. standard? Electrocute Topsy, an abused, killer circus elephant, to a crowd of 1,500 curious onlookers at Coney Island’s Luna Park, of course.
Edison filmed the grim spectacle, and would later release the short Electrocuting an Elephant. What an asshole.
If you’re even the faintest bit squeamish, look away.
A century ago, you’d be pressed to find any considerable stretch of inhabited earth sizzling with electrical power. “Power” was still very much a nascent privilege confined to certain urban pockets. The heat was on burgeoning and competing companies to get all the first world’s denizens plugged in and humming. Untold fortunes were up for grabs.
The War of Currents, as this competitive rush became known, pitted Edison and his direct currents against Pittsburgh’s George Westinghouse and various other European sparksmen, notably a duped Tesla, who were pushing for widespread AC adoption. Edison feared he’d potentally be stripped of his patent royalties, and was scrambling to stage a proper publicity jaunt to show once and for all that, behold, DC was The Way. He needed a demonstration of epic proportions.
Topsy, then 28, was easy prey. A show elephant with the Forepaugh Circus, she’d spent a good portion of her life under the whip of a sadistically abusive trainer most remembered for having once attempted to feed the poor brute a lit cigarette. Topsy eventually took to killing people, taking out three circus-hands over three years. Who can blame her? Labeled a threat to owners and circus goers, Topsy, who was then being held at Luna Park, was handed over to Edison.
On January 4, 1903, Edison fed Topsy carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide. Then he hooked the dazed beast to a 6,600-Volt AC source, which shot a crippling shock through her hulking, damaged frame. Topsy quite literally fried, dropping stiff and smoking in mere seconds. See! AC is dangerous, people.
Did Edison win the War of Currents? Not by any means, no. To be sure, the “war” actually came to a sort of end at the International Electro-Technical Exposition in Frankfurt in 1891. There, numerous demos demonstrated the potential in AC power systems long before Topsy fell. Edison’s Coney Island circus, then, was a pathetic and final grab for money and power (and power).
If anything, Topsy eventually came out on top. In 1944, Luna Park appropriately went up in flames.
