History of the Electric Chair. “Although it was not officially recorded, the first execution used a voltage of around 1,700 volts. The voltage has tended to rise over time, and it is now typically 2,000 to 2,200 volts at seven to twelve amps in the current period.”
In an electric chair, what current is used?
Every civilization has mechanisms in place to keep its members in check. Silent disapproval, incarceration, exile, and even the death penalty are all options. Many individuals in the late 1800s were opposed to the brutal practice of hanging a prisoner, which may result in the prisoner being slowly strangled or unexpectedly decapitated. Indeed, due to public outrage over botched hangings, the New York Legislature almost outlawed capital punishment in 1834. As a result, when the electric chair was proposed as a painless method of execution, many people enthusiastically accepted it. However, it was far from painless in reality.
Benjamin Franklin claimed in 1773 that he had electrocuted a 10-pound turkey, a lamb, and many chicks. However, in 1881, a dentist named Alfred Southwick of Buffalo, New York, came up with the idea of electrocuting wrongdoers. He observed a drunk slip into a bare wire and die instantly, and Southwick assumed the man died peacefully based on no evidence. Southwick, a dentist and an engineer, was a member of the Commission that studied and approved the first use of the electric chair.
The introduction of the electric chair was accompanied by a clandestine and high-level battle between supporters of Direct Current (DC) and Alternating Current (AC) electricity (Edison) (Westinghouse). The prisoner was electrocuted with a thousand or so volts of AC in the electric chairs. The study of AC electric chairs was surreptitiously funded by Edison (the DC man) in order for citizens to reject to utilize Westinghouse’s AC electricity in their homes. “Do you want electrocutioner’s current in your children’s bedroom wall?” stated the sign on the hoarding. In retribution, Westinghouse paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to try to prevent the axe murderer William Kemmler from being executed by electric chair. Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair on August 6, 1890, in Auburn Prison, New York. Even though Edison had won the war, he had lost the battle. Because of its technical advantages, AC became the standard kind of electricity sold in the United States.
Approximately half of the states in the United States used the electric chair to carry out the death penalty during its peak. Nowadays, lethal injection is the chosen procedure.
The fundamental reason for the electric chair’s demise is because it is so cruel and barbaric that even the most hardened Deep South hanging judges refused to use it. Kemmler’s heinous end was not unusual. He lived despite thrashing around in pain while a thousand-plus volts of AC surged through his body. A second dosage of 1,300 volts for 70 seconds was required. The initial dose had dried out some of the electrodes where they had come into contact with his skin, and the chamber reeked of burnt flesh and hair. Blood squirted out of his skin as his blood vessels burst apart. Other electric chair executions resulted in the inmates’ leg muscles spasming so fiercely that the leather straps holding them down broke, and the flesh was burned off the bones in other cases.
The issue is with what electricity does. It causes uncontrollable and excruciating spasms in the muscles. It also causes fibrillation, which causes the individual cardiac muscles to writhe in an uncoordinated manner, similar to a bag of worms. However, the following zap of electricity will resynchronize the heartbeat, accompanied by excruciating muscle pain. And so it would go, back and forth, until the prisoner died. The idea of a painless and quick death was never fulfilled.
Approximately 4,300 people have died on the electric chair during the last century or so. Proponents of capital punishment nowadays claim that lethal injection is painless. You have to wonder what will be told to us in a few decades.
What is the electric chair’s voltage and amperage?
Derrick Schofield, the Commissioner of Corrections, is certain that the processes and testing on the electric chair have been sufficient to reintroduce it into regular use. According to records obtained by The Associated Press, an electrician – whose identity has been deleted due to state legislation – tests the chair to ensure that it will execute an inmate. The purpose of the testing is to ensure that the chair can give 1,750 volts at 7 amps for 20 seconds, then disengage for 15 seconds before re-engaging for another 15 seconds. Members of the execution crew receive monthly training on how to operate the electric chair, which was tested by prison officials in February, according to public records.
How many amps does it take for humans to die?
While any current greater than 10 milliamperes (0.01 amp) can cause uncomfortable to severe shock, currents of 100 to 200 milliamperes (0.1 to 0.2 amp) are deadly.
What is the voltage of an amp?
Using this calculator, you can simply convert watts to amps. You can also have some fun with numbers:
We solved a few cases of how many amps are 500 watts, 1000 watts, and 3000 watts to demonstrate how watts can be converted to amps. Finally, at 120V electric potential, you’ll find a watts-to-amps table.
What is the lethal voltage?
Since the war of the currents in the 1880s, the risks of alternating current at normal power transmission frequencies (i.e., 50 or 60 Hz) and direct current have been a point of contention. Animal research at the time revealed that alternating current was nearly twice as harmful per unit of current flow than direct current (or per unit of applied voltage).
Human mortality is thought to be most likely when alternating current is between 100 and 250 volts; nonetheless, death has been reported at voltages as low as 42 volts. Shocks above 2,700 volts are often fatal, with those above 11,000 volts being usually fatal, though exceptional cases have been noted. Assuming a steady current flow (as opposed to a shock from a capacitor or static electricity), shocks above 2,700 volts are often fatal, with those above 11,000 volts being usually fatal, though exceptional cases have been noted. On November 9, 1967, seventeen-year-old Brian Latasa escaped a 230,000 volt shock on the tower of an ultra-high voltage line in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, according to a Guinness Book of World Records joke. He was “jolted into the air, and landed across the line,” according to a news report, and despite being rescued by firemen, he sustained burns over 40% of his body and was completely paralyzed save for his eyes. Harry F. McGrew, who came into touch with a 340,000 volt transmission line in Huntington Canyon, Utah, survived the shock with the highest voltage reported.
Is the firing squad a terrible experience?
During his 1938 firing squad execution, John W. Deering consented to an ECG recording of the effect of bullet wounds on his heart, and his body was later donated to the University of Utah School of Medicine at his request.
Since 1960, four people have been executed by firing squad, all in Utah: James W. Rodgers in 1960, Gary Gilmore in 1977, and John Albert Taylor in 1996, who chose a firing squad for his execution “to make a message that Utah was legalizing murder,” according to The New York Times. Taylor justified his decision in a 2010 piece for the British newspaper The Times, saying he didn’t want to “flop around like a dying fish” during a lethal injection. Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by firing squad in 2010, citing his “Mormon heritage” as a reason for his preference for this manner of execution. Gardner also believed that lawmakers were attempting to abolish the firing squad, against popular sentiment in Utah, in order to improve the state’s image ahead of the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Although Utah banned fire squad executions in 2004, the rule did not apply retroactively, and three inmates on Utah’s death row had chosen the firing squad as their method of execution. Idaho stopped fire squad executions in 2009, leaving Oklahoma as the only state that still uses this type of execution (and only as a secondary method).
Drug firms’ aversion to seeing their products used to murder people has resulted in a shortage of the most regularly used lethal injection medications. Utah passed legislation in March 2015 that allows for execution by firing squad if the medications used are unavailable. A return to the firing squad is also being considered in a number of other states. As a result, after declining in both use and popularity in recent decades, fire squad executions appear to be recovering appeal as an alternative to lethal injection, at least anecdotally, as of 2022.
In Arthur v. Dunn (2017), Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued: “Aside from being nearly instantaneous, shooting death may also be rather painless.
In the past, the firing squad has resulted in far fewer botched executions.”
The South Carolina Senate voted 2613 on January 30, 2019 to resurrect a proposal to reinstate the electric chair and add firing squads to the state’s execution alternatives. Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina signed a bill into law on May 14, 2021, that reinstated the electric chair as the default method of death (in the event that lethal injection was not available) and added the firing squad to the list of execution choices. South Carolina hasn’t carried out an execution in more than a decade, and the state’s lethal injection medicines ran out in 2013. Since then, pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell fatal injection medications.
The execution of Richard Bernard Moore was set for April 29, 2022, by the South Carolina Supreme Court on April 7, 2022. Moore chose the firing squad over the electric chair for his execution on April 15, 2022, but his execution was later halted by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
down” multiple times along the route. One sort of transformer is the gray barrel-like objects we see hanging high on electric poles. For control circuits, we utilize a very small one. Soon, there will be more on that.
The electricity generated by the power plant is referred to as “voltage on the line.” When we acquire it, it’s been stepped down to 240, 220, 120, or 110 volts. By the time it reaches us, it’s been dubbed “home is up to date.”
There is polarity in line voltage. The “hot leg” vs. the “neutral leg” of line voltage may be recognizable to you. Touching the heated leg hurts, but not the neutral leg. “L1” stands for hot, and “L2” stands for neutral.
What’s going on is this: Consider an electricity train leaving a power plant. The train is brimming with massive, powerful electricity. That’s the smoldering leg.
When the electricity train arrives at its destination, it is unloaded and used to power lights, motors, and other devices. The electricity is converted into a different type of energy (light, motion). Now that the electricity train is depleted, it must return to the power plant to be reloaded. The neutral leg is the electricity train returning.
Line voltage, on the other hand, isn’t ideal for control circuits. The main reason is the issue of comfort that I keep mentioning. Low-voltage controls allow you to control the temperature within a two-degree range, which is the definition of heating comfort. Of course, line voltage controls are available, but the temperature swing is greater, resulting in less comfort.
What is the sensation of a deadly injection?
To avoid precipitation, the medications are not combined externally. The delivery of the pentobarbital puts the person unconscious; the infusion of pancuronium bromide creates total paralysis, including that of the lungs and diaphragm, rendering the person unable to breathe.
The injection of a highly concentrated potassium chloride solution, if the person being executed was not already completely unconscious, could cause severe pain at the site of the IV line as well as along the punctured vein; it interrupts the electrical activity of the heart muscle and causes it to stop beating, resulting in the person’s death.
Intravenous tubing is routed to a room adjacent to the execution chamber, which is normally isolated from the condemned by a curtain or wall. A venipuncture-trained prison staffer usually inserts the needle, while another prison employee orders, prepares, and loads the medications into the fatal injection syringes. Two more staff workers secure the three syringes into the IVs. The convicted individual is allowed to make a final remark when the curtain is opened to allow the witnesses to view inside the chamber. The warden then indicates that the execution is about to begin, and the executioner(s) (either prison personnel or private civilians, depending on the jurisdiction) manually inject the three drugs in order. The heart beat of the condemned is monitored throughout the execution.
When heart activity quits, death becomes apparent. Death normally happens in seven minutes, though it might take up to two hours due to difficulty in finding a suitable vein, as was the case with Christopher Newton’s execution on May 24, 2007. If a physician’s participation in the execution is prohibited by state law due to medical ethics, the state medical examiner’s office can make the death determination. A coroner signs the condemned’s death certificate after confirming that death has occurred.
Why does it take so long to execute someone who has been sentenced to death?
Delays in the procedure are nothing new, according to Clow, but the appeals process is the most significant bottleneck. There are nine steps in total, the first of which is a direct appeal, which is granted to everyone sentenced to death.
Can you withstand a voltage of 10,000 volts?
The wires in Tough Mudder’s Electroshock Therapy obstacle are charged with 10,000 volts of electricity, which seems impossible at first, especially considering that a typical American 120-volt outlet can electrocute you. (A quick refresher on human-electricity contact jargon: “electrocuted” means “dead,” whereas “shocked” implies “alive.”)
However, it’s plausible that some Electroshock Therapy cables are powered by 10,000 volts of electricity, as claimed.
While 10,000 volts can be life-threatening in some circumstances, Dr. Michael S. Morse, an electrical engineering professor at the University of San Diego, explains that something can have 10,000 volts behind it and still be pretty innocuous. “It may discharge a high quantity of current for a little period of time,” he explains, “but it poses little to no risk in general.”
This is because electric shocks are caused by a variety of variables other than voltage. The amount of energy driving the electric current, measured in amps (which is directly connected to voltage), the frequency of that current, the duration of the shock, and where it enters and departs the body are the most critical of those variables.
In amps, Morse outlines how people sense shock. He claims that humans can sense a thousandth of an amp, or one milliamp, of electricity. To put it in context, a 100-watt light bulb uses around 800 milliamps to turn on. At ten milliamps, a person can suffer pain, and at 14 to 15 milliamps, muscle control is lost, resulting in the “cant let go” phenomenon. A heart rate of fifty milliamps puts you at risk of dying from an irregular cardiac rhythm.
However, as previously indicated, the manner in which those amps are supplied has a significant impact on whether or not you’re toast. The current of a TASER can approach 14 amps, and the devices can deliver over 14,000 volts across a human body. However, their pulse lasts only a few millionths of a second, and the average current they emit is less than four milliamps over time. (Recent research from Wake Forest University found that TASERs are largely non-lethal.)
“As a rule of thumb,” Morse explains, “amperage is about one-one thousandth of the voltage when it comes to human contact.” That would put the amperage of Electroshock Therapy at around 10 amps, making a shock from that hurdle comparable to being tased. To make matters worse, when Mudders go through the wires, they are frequently wet, and moist skin reduces the body’s tolerance to electric shock.
In the end, whether or not you can survive a Tough Mudder shock of 10,000 volts is a personal choice. “Humans are tremendously variable,” says Morse, “and some people are significantly more susceptible to electricity.” That’s why, at the outset of each race, Tough Mudder makes it plain that if you have any cardiac problems, pacemakers, internal metal, or simply don’t want to be shocked, you should avoid all electrified obstacles.
Before Outside contacted him for this article, Morse had never heard of Tough Mudder and had no idea how the organization generates electricity. That’s certainly a good omen, because Morse is one of the nation’s foremost legal experts on electrocution, routinely testifying in instances involving electricity and humans.
In the end, it’s ten thousand volts! More power to you if you’re psychologically and physically capable of enduring frequent tasing.