The Rival He Tried to Kill With an Execution
Thomas Edison lost the biggest bet of his career — so he tried to make his rival's technology look like a murder weapon.
The Rival He Tried to Kill With an Execution
Category: Business Rivalries Topic: The War of the Currents (Edison vs. Westinghouse) Length: 126 seconds (~335 words) Read by: voiceover narrator (third person)
Thomas Edison lost the biggest bet of his career — so he tried to make his rival's technology look like a murder weapon.
By the late 1880s, Edison had wired American cities for direct current: his DC. But George Westinghouse, backed by Nikola Tesla's patents, was selling something better — alternating current, AC, which traveled farther and cost less to deliver. Edison was losing the fight for the American power grid, so his camp went to work branding the rival system as unsafe.
In 1887 and 1888, an engineer named Harold Brown, quietly funded by Edison, staged public electrocutions for reporters. Forty-four dogs. Six calves. Two horses. Every one killed with AC, to prove Westinghouse's current was a killer.
Then Edison went further. He helped build the first electric chair, using a Westinghouse AC generator bought through a middleman, so New York state could execute convicted murderer William Kemmler with his rival's own machine.
On August 6, 1890, at Auburn Prison, Kemmler was strapped in. The first jolt: 700 volts, seventeen seconds. The current failed. Witnesses smelled burning flesh. Kemmler was still alive. A second jolt hit him — 1,030 volts, nearly two minutes — until smoke rose from his head. George Westinghouse, hearing how it went, said dryly: "They would have done better with an axe."
Edison wanted the world to call electrocution "getting Westinghoused." He wanted AC buried for good.
It didn't work. Three years later, Westinghouse lit the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with alternating current. That same year, he won the contract to harness Niagara Falls. AC became the standard that still powers your house today.
But Edison's smear campaign left something behind anyway: a legend. Decades later, in 1903, a circus elephant named Topsy was electrocuted at Coney Island, and the story that stuck was that Edison did it, to prove AC still killed. He didn't. He wasn't even there. The war had ended ten years earlier, and Westinghouse had already won.
The myth outlived the men who built it — and outlived the truth, too.
Sources
- The Westinghouse/Edison Rivalry: stray dogs, circus elephants, and getting Westinghoused — Scientific American
- First execution by electric chair, August 6, 1890 — HISTORY.com
- 1890: William Kemmler, only in America — Executed Today
- Topsy the Elephant Was a Victim of Her Captors, Not Thomas Edison — Smithsonian Magazine
Direction notes
Direction Notes — The Rival He Tried to Kill With an Execution
Tone
Dry, matter-of-fact true-crime narrator. Let the facts carry the horror instead of over-selling it — no melodrama on the animal or execution details. Cold and clinical on the numbers, wry on the Westinghouse quote, quietly triumphant on the 1893 turn, flat and ironic on the kicker.
Pacing
- Target run time: 126 seconds
- Reading speed: ~160 wpm; slow to ~130 wpm on the final two lines ("The myth outlived...")
- Beats / pauses: beat before "Forty-four dogs." (let the list land word by word); beat after "The current failed."; beat before "He didn't. He wasn't even there."; half-beat before the closing line.
Emphasis cues
- lost the biggest bet of his career — sets up the inversion of the "genius inventor" myth
- Forty-four dogs. Six calves. Two horses. — deliver as a flat body count, not a punchline
- They would have done better with an axe — Westinghouse's actual quote; deadpan delivery, don't play it for laughs
- He didn't. He wasn't even there. — the myth-bust; this is the twist the whole script is building to
B-roll / visual hooks (optional)
- Archival-style engraving/illustration of dueling power lines or a spark-gap generator, not literal animal footage
- On-screen number treatment for "700 volts" / "1,030 volts" / "1893"
- Old World's Fair nighttime photo or illustration for the Chicago beat
- Coney Island / Luna Park era postcard imagery for the kicker
Music / SFX (optional)
Low electrical hum/crackle under the open and the Kemmler beat, cutting out sharply on "The current failed." Rebuild to a brighter, resolving tone under the 1893 win, then drop back to a hollow, quiet tone for the myth kicker.
Provenance
Metadata — The Rival He Tried to Kill With an Execution
- Category: business-rivalries
- Topic slug: edison-westinghouse-war-of-currents
- Date: 2026-07-21
- Generated by: Claude Code (
script/categories/audio/voiceover-script-generator/) - Workflow prompt:
My-Library/Content/Voiceover-Scripts/Prompts/generate-voiceover-script.md - Word count: 335
- Estimated read time: 126 seconds at ~160 wpm
- Research tool: WebSearch (built-in)
- Cover image model: gemini-3.1-flash-image (agy declined / quota exhausted, used fallback)
- Cover image prompt: Dueling lightning-bolt currents (cool blue vs. jagged amber) coiled around an electric-chair silhouette, modern editorial-tech illustration, navy/cyan/amber/ash palette, centered 16:9, no text/faces/logos
- Sources:
- https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/the-westinghouseedison-rivalry-stray-dogs-circus-elephants-and-getting-westinghoused/
- https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/august-6/first-execution-by-electric-chair
- https://www.executedtoday.com/2008/08/06/1890-william-kemmler-electric-chair-edison-westinghouse/
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/topsy-elephant-was-victim-her-captors-not-really-thomas-edison-180961611/
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