4Jan2019 – Topsy Executed

made 06Dec2018

Topsy was an illegal alien Asian Elephant. She was somehow smuggled into the country as a baby and subsequently represented as the first elephant born in the country. She spent her life performing in circuses and as an adult she ended up at Coney Island. By that time she had already killed one of her handlers and was classified a “bad elephant.” While at Coney Island she killed two more handlers. All of these events were as a result of physical abuse directed at her body. The owners tried to unload her but were unsuccessful so decided to kill her. She was scheduled to be hanged in conjunction with the opening of a nearby amusement park and tickets were sold to the public for 25¢ each. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals got wind of this and declared it animal cruelty and convinced the owner to drug Topsy, electrocute her, and then to strangle her. Topsy was electrocuted on 4Jan1903.

A lot has been written about Thomas Edison having orchestrated this as part of his Current War with the Westinghouse Company over whether Edison’s DC current or Westinghouse’s DC current would become the dominant current for most uses. Edison had been claiming AC current was unsafe and people would be electrocuted wholesale by it. He performed experiments on dogs, sheep and even a horse to show that the voltages of DC current he used did not harm the animals while they could be killed with AC current. By the time Topsy was electrocuted AC current had already won the Current War so there was no need for Edison to organize another demonstration. It is true that the company that supplied the electricity bore Edison’s name, but it was not owned by his company. And his company had already shuffled him off to the sidelines and was supplying AC current as well as DC current. The Edison company sent a film crew to film the event so it could go into their kinetoscope movie viewers, but Edison did not control that part of the business either, although his name appears on the films title frames.

I got a rubber African bull elephant (Topsy was a female) off the internet. Then I got a knife switch from the same source. I got hose clamps from the local big box hardware store. The wire is stuff I had here from previous projects.

I thought that I should put a sign above the knife switch saying 3,000V AC but it didn’t get into my notes and I forgot about it when I was setting up the scene.

Resources:

Featured Tools:

Double pole, double throw knife switch
Hose clamps