The proposal to use electricity provoked legal wrangles between the Edison and Westinghouse companies which promoted, respectively, direct and alternating current.Following the first electrocution in 1890, Dr Alfred Southwick, the chair of the commission which recommended the electric chair, was reported as saying that "we live in a higher civilisation from this day"(5) though Thomas Edison reportedly "rebuked the doctors and said it was a mistake to have let them handle the… [read post]