:"A bill authorizing the electric chair was stalled in the NY legislature during 1888 due to a dispute between George Westinghouse and Edison over which electrical system was best for city lights, [[AC]] or [[DC]]. In order to discredit the Westinghouse AC system, Edison in late 1887 set up a 1000 volt generator in his lab to show how AC was so dangerous that it could kill cats and dogs, and even an 830-pound horse in 1888 in a test by Edison agent Harold P. Brown. The NY bill was signed June 4, 1888, and went into effect June 1, 1889, for anyone convicted of murder in 1889. William Kemmler killed his wife with an axe March 29, 1889, admitted his guilt and was found guilty at a quick trial in May. Westinghouse filed a lawsuit to prevent the use of the electric chair, and presented evidence that electricity did not cause a quick and painless death. But Kemmler was executed (painfully) on Aug. 6, 1890, at Auburn prison in New York, with 1600 volts from a Westinghouse AC generator supervised by Harold P. Brown."
Edison also wanted the chair to be called the "Westinghouse chair". <ref>http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=11574</ref>
Notable people who have been executed via this method include [[Leon Czolgosz]], the assassin of [[William McKinley]] and [[Julius Rosenberg | Julius]] and [[Ethel Rosenberg]], who spied for the [[Soviet Union]].