This story originally appeared in our November/December 2021 issue as "Cruel Inventions." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.
The crowd in the auditorium had no idea what they were about to witness, but the appearance of the dog put them instantly on guard. It was July 1888, at Columbia College in New York, and an electrician named Harold Brown had dragged a 76-pound Newfoundland mix onstage and forced it into a wooden cage surrounded by wire mesh.
While the dog cowered, Brown read a paper about the merits of alternating current (AC) versus direct current (DC), with an emphasis on how alternating current was deadlier. Upon finishing, he proceeded to do what everyone present feared, wrapping wet cotton around the dog’s right forelimb and left hind limb, then wrapping the cotton with bare copper wire. The wire was connected to a generator, and when everything was ready, Brown flipped the switch.
After each pulse — some AC, some DC — the dog howled and quaked, and once slammed so hard against the cage that its head ripped through the wire mesh. Eventually, after an AC pulse, it died. One witness said the demonstration made a bullfight look like a petting zoo. Brown, meanwhile, was elated. He felt he’d proved his main point: that AC was deadlier than DC, since AC had killed. He knew this would be music to the ears of his benefactor, too, the man who’d sponsored the torture of the Newfoundland as well as several other animals — that American saint, Thomas Edison.
