Dentist Alfred P. Southwick is famously known as the creator of the electric chair, a method widely known for executing criminals and accused people.
The story goes that one day, the dentist saw a highly intoxicated fellow touching a live electric generator. The man died an extremely quick death. After having witnessed this, the dentist came to a conclusion. He studied that the conduction of electricity could result in the death of a living being. Since his profession had him perform all medical procedures by making his patients sit on the chair, he came up with the unique idea of an electric chair.
Alfred P. Southwick along with the Governor of New York state, David B. Hill worked tremendously hard to make the law of execution on an electric chair legal and recommended that death by electrocution should be made a legal form of capital punishment.
Finally, on January 1st, 1889 the law went into effect and on August 6th, 1890 the electric chair claimed its first victim, William Kemmler.
This guest post has been written by the research group from HappyHealth
