the.com/electric chair
A device used to execute condemned prisoners by passing lethal electric current through the body.
means A chair wired to deliver lethal electric current, once used by U.S. states as a method of capital punishment.
from Born in the 1880s out of the 'War of the Currents,' when Thomas Edison backed AC's use in the chair partly to smear his rival George Westinghouse's alternating-current system as deadly — hoping the public would associate AC with death. New York built the first one and used it in 1890. The word itself is just literal: a chair, made electric.
- invented by
- a dentist, somewhat appropriately
- first used
- 1890, took two jolts to work
- marketing origin
- Edison backed it to discredit rival Westinghouse's AC current
- still legal
- in several US states as backup method