The Guillotine’s First Cut - History in the Headlines The Guillotine’s First Cut April 25, 2012 By Christopher Klein Share The guillotine, the notorious killing machine of the French Revolution, was used to behead thousands, including King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Why was it a humane form of execution for its time, and did victims' brains continue functioning after decapitation? Share this: The Guillotine’s First Cut Author The Guillotine’s First Cut URL Google On April 25, 1792, convicted felon Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier became the first person to be executed by the guillotine. While the guillotine became known as a ruthlessly efficient killing machine, its eponym was actually motivated by humanitarian impulses. As the spirit of liberté, égalité and fraternité swirled through Paris in the early days of the French Revolution, Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin rose before the National Assembly in 1789 to lobby for equality in a most unlikely area: capital punishment.

The Parisian deputy and anatomy professor argued that it was unfair for common criminals in France to be executed by tortuous methods such as hanging, burning at the stake and breaking on the wheel while aristocratic felons had the privilege of quick decapitations, particularly if they tipped their executioners to ensure swift sword chops. Guillotin beseeched his fellow lawmakers to follow their egalitarian principles and adopt a more humanitarian and equitable system of capital punishment whereby all criminals, irrespective of class, would be beheaded. In 1791 the National Assembly made decapitation the only legal form of capital punishment in France, but the state executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, knew this presented practical problems. A fourth-generation executioner for whom capital punishment was the family business, Sanson warned the National Assembly that beheading by sword was an inexact science that would require dozens of skilled executioners, scores of fresh swords and a means of securing felons to guarantee quick cuts. “Swords have very often broken in the performance of such executions, and the Paris executioner possesses only two,” he wrote. The solution was found in another of Guillotin’s ideas: a beheading machine that ensured a rapid and merciful death.

“The mechanism falls like lightning; the head flies off; the blood spurts; the man no longer exists,” Guillotin told his colleagues. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who proposed the idea for the beheading machine that became known as the guillotine. While Guillotin proposed the device, Dr. Antoine Louis designed the prototype, which was originally nicknamed the “Louison” or “Louisette.” Decapitation machines dated back to ancient times, but the contraption unveiled at the Bicêtre Hospital in Paris in April 1792 was cutting-edge in more ways than one. As with many modern-day products, the testing began with animals. After Sanson cleanly severed the heads of live sheep and calves, he successfully tested the guillotine on the corpses of women and children. The cuts on male corpses were not as clean, however, and prompted a redesign. The height from which the knife dropped was increased, and the convex blade was changed to a sloping, triangular shape.

(An apocryphal story popularized by an Alexandre Dumas novel has King Louis XVI suggesting the changes to the machine that would ultimately lop off his head nine months later.) After Sanson proclaimed himself satisfied with the redesign, it was time for the rollout. A throng of curious Parisians filled the plaza outside Hôtel de Ville and watched for two hours as the guillotine, appropriately painted blood red, was assembled on a scaffold. As a special unit of soldiers under American Revolution hero General Lafayette stood guard, the man whose blood would christen the new killing machine, Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, was paraded onto the platform. Judge Jacob-Augustin Moreau had sentenced Pelletier to die for robbery and murder in December 1791. The execution was stayed, however, as the means of Pelletier’s death was being developed.

Although Pelletier may not have agreed, Judge Moreau had implored the French minister of justice “in the name of humanity” to speed up the guillotine’s construction for the sake of the “unfortunate man condemned to death, who realizes his fate and for whom each moment that prolongs his life must be a death for him.” Now the final moments had come. Sanson pinned the condemned man’s neck into the guillotine and released the weighted blade. Pelletier’s head dropped into a wicker basket as workers shoveled sawdust onto the blood-soaked boards. The spectacle, although quite sanguinary, was too clinical and anticlimactic to satisfy the bloodlust of the crowd. “Give me back my wooden gallows,” members of the mob chanted. In spite of the crowd reaction, the swift justice delivered by the guillotine was deemed a success. Manufacturing was ramped up to supply towns across France, and guillotines seeped into popular French culture. At fashionable dinner parties, model guillotines decapitated effigies of enemies or politicians, causing red perfume or expensive liqueurs to spew forth.

Toy manufacturers even produced miniature contraptions that children used to behead dolls and live mice. Executions by the guillotine may have been less tortuous, but they could now be carried out with the efficiency of a slaughterhouse assembly line. With the executioner now reduced to more button-pusher than craftsman, Sanson could guillotine a dozen victims in just 13 minutes. When the French Revolution morphed horrifically into the “Reign of Terror” just months after Pelletier’s execution, thousands—often without trial and with little cause—were beheaded by guillotine blades. At the height of this bloody phase, Sanson decapitated 300 men and women in just three days, and the former royal executioner even guillotined King Louis XVI on January 21, 1793. (The use of the guillotine for French executions continued until 1977. France abolished capital punishment in 1981.) Guillotin became deeply distressed at how the device that he intended to be an example of the democratic nature and forward thinking of the French Revolution instead became a symbol of carnage and terror.

Worst of all, the fatal machine will forever be attached to his name. Tags A History of the Guillotine in Europe Reference and Reviews for European History - Reference and Reviews The Guillotine in Algeria, Execution for murder of prisonners, under the eye of the victims young nephew, forced to watch heads roll in order to acknowledge revenge. Engraving. Frontpage of French newspaper Le Petit Parisien February 5, 1899. Private Collection. Leemage/ Universal Images Group/ Getty Images Updated November 24, 2016. The guillotine is one of European history's most bloody icons. Although designed with the best of intentions, this hugely recognizable machine soon became associated with events that have overshadowed both its heritage and its development: the French Revolution . Yet, despite such a high profile and chilling reputation, histories of la guillotine remain muddled, often differing on quite basic details. This article explains, not just the events that brought the guillotine to prominence, but also the machine's place in a broader history of decapitation which, as far as France is concerned, finished only recently.

Pre-Guillotine Machines: Halifax Gibbet Although older narratives may tell you that the guillotine was invented in the late 18th century, most recent accounts recognize that similar 'decapitation machines' have a long history. continue reading below our video What is a Guillotine? The most famous, and possibly one of the earliest, was the Halifax Gibbet, a monolithic wooden structure which was supposedly created from two fifteen foot high uprights capped by a horizontal beam. The blade was an axe head , attached to the bottom of a four and a half foot wooden block that slid up and down via grooves in the uprights. This device was mounted on a large, square, platform which was itself four foot high. The Halifax Gibbet was certainly substantial, and may date from as early as 1066, although the first definite reference is from the 1280s. Executions took place in the town's Market Place on Saturdays, and the machine remained in use until April 30th, 1650. Pre-Guillotine Machines: Ireland Another early example is immortalized in the picture 'The execution of Murcod Ballagh near to Merton in Ireland 1307'.

As the title suggests, the victim was called Murcod Ballagh, and he was decapitated by equipment which looks remarkably similar to the later French guillotines. Another, unrelated, picture depicts the combination of a guillotine style machine and a traditional beheading. The victim is lying on a bench, with an axe head held above his neck by some sort of mechanism. The difference lies in the executioner, who is shown wielding a large hammer, ready to strike the mechanism and drive the blade down. If this device existed, it may have been an attempt to improve the accuracy of the impact. Use of Early Machines There were many other machines, including the Scottish Maiden - a wooden construction based directly on the Halifax Gibbet, dating from the mid 16th century - and the Italian Mannaia, which was famously used to execute Beatrice Cenci, a woman whose life is obscured by clouds of myth. Beheading was usually reserved for the wealthy or powerful as it was considered to be nobler, and certainly less painful, than other methods; the machines were similarly restricted. However, the Halifax Gibbet is an important, and often overlooked, exception, because it was used to execute anyone breaking the relevant laws, including the poor.

Although these decapitation machines certainly existed - the Halifax Gibbet was alleged to have been only one out of a hundred similar devices in Yorkshire - they were generally localized, with a design and use unique to their region; the French guillotine was to be very different. Pre-Revolutionary Methods of French Execution Many methods of execution were used across France in the early 18th century, ranging from the painful, to the grotesque, bloody and painful. Hanging and burning were common, as were more imaginative methods, such as tying the victim to four horses and forcing these to gallop in different directions, a process that tore the individual apart. The rich or powerful could be beheaded with axe or sword, while many suffered the compilation of death and torture that comprised hanging, drawing and quartering. These methods had a twofold purpose: to punish the criminal and to act as a warning for others; accordingly, the majority of executions took place in public. Opposition to these punishments was slowly growing, due mainly to the ideas and philosophies of the Enlightenment thinkers - people such as Voltaire and Locke - who argued for humanitarian methods of execution. One of these was Dr.

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin; however, it is unclear whether the doctor was an advocate of capital punishment, or someone who wanted it to be, ultimately, abolished. Dr. Guillotin 's Proposals The French Revolution began in 1789, when an attempt to relieve a financial crisis exploded very much in the faces of the monarchy. A meeting called an Estates General transformed into a National Assembly which seized control of the moral and practical power at the heart of France, a process which convulsed the country, re-shaping the country's social, cultural and political makeup. The legal system was reviewed immediately. On October 10th 1789 - the second day of the debate about France's penal code - Dr. Guillotin proposed six articles to the new Legislative Assembly , one of which called for decapitation to become the sole method of execution in France. This was to be carried out by a simple machine, and involve no torture. Guillotin presented an etching that illustrated one possible device, resembling an ornate, but hollow, stone column with a falling blade, operated by an effete executioner cutting the suspension rope.

The machine was also hidden from the view of large crowds, according with Guillotin's view that execution should be private and dignified. This suggestion was rejected; some accounts describe the Doctor being laughed, albeit nervously, out of the Assembly. Narratives often ignore the other five reforms: one asked for a nationwide standardisation in punishment, while others concerned the treatment of the criminal's family, who were not to be harmed or discredited; property, which was not to be confiscated; and corpses, which were to be returned to the families. When Guillotin proposed his articles again on December 1st 1789, these five recommendations were accepted, but the beheading machine was, again, rejected. Growing Public Support The situation developed in 1791, when the Assembly agreed - after weeks of discussion - to retain the death penalty; they then began to discuss a more humane and egalitarian method of execution, as many of the previous techniques were felt to be too barbaric and unsuitable.

Beheading was the preferred option, and the Assembly accepted a new, albeit repetitive, proposal by the Marquis Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, decreeing that "Every person condemned to the death penalty shall have his head severed". Guillotin's notion of a decapitation machine began to grow in popularity, even if the Doctor himself had abandoned it. Traditional methods like the sword or axe could prove messy and difficult, especially if the executioner missed or the prisoner struggled; a machine would not only be fast and reliable, but it would never tire. France's main executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, championed these final points. The First Guillotine is Built The Assembly - working through Pierre-Louis Roederer, the Procureur général - sought advice from Doctor Antoine Louis, the Secretary of the Academy of Surgery in France, and his design for a quick, painless, decapitation machine was given to Tobias Schmidt, a German Engineer. It is unclear whether Louis drew his inspiration from existing devices, or whether he designed from afresh. Schmidt built the first guillotine and tested it, initially on animals, but later on human corpses.

It comprised two fourteen-foot uprights joined by a crossbar, whose internal edges were grooved and greased with tallow; the weighted blade was either straight, or curved like an axe. The system was operated via a rope and pulley, while the whole construction was mounted on a high platform. The final testing took place at a hospital in Bicêtre, where three carefully chosen corpses - those of strong, stocky men - were successfully beheaded. The first execution took place on April 25th, 1792, when a highwayman called Nicholas-Jacques Pelletier was killed. Further improvements were made, and an independent report to Roederer recommended a number of changes, including metal trays to collect blood; at some stage the famous angled blade was introduced and the high platform abandoned, replaced by a basic scaffold. Prev Antoine Louis : Wikis (The Full Wiki) The Full Wiki More info on Antoine Louis Wikis Advertisements Note: Many of our articles have direct quotes from sources you can cite, within the Wikipedia article! This article doesn't yet, but we're working on it! See more info or our list of citable articles .

Encyclopedia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Antoine Louis (February 13, 1723 – May 20, 1792) was a French surgeon and physiologist who was born in Metz . He was originally trained in medicine by his father, a surgeon-major at a local military hospital. As a young man he moved to Paris , where he served as gagnant-maîtrise at the Salpêtrière . In 1750 he was appointed professor of physiology, a position he maintained for forty years. In 1764 he was appointed lifetime secretary to the Académie Royale de Chirurgie . Louis published numerous articles on surgery, including several biographies of surgeons who died during his lifetime. He also published the surgical aphorisms of Dutch physician Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738). Louis is credited with designing a prototype of the guillotine . This device however, is named after French physician Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814), who was an advocate of a more humane method of capital punishment .

For a period of time after its invention, the guillotine was called a louisette . Another name for the sternal angle is the "angle of Louis", which is the point of junction between the manubrium and the body of the sternum . References The Eponyms Series – Guillotine | The Wordfoolery Blog The Eponyms Series – Guillotine July 8, 2013 by wordfoolery Hello, I always assumed that the inventor of the guillotine pronunciation here ) must have been a Frenchman called Guillotine during the Revolution (1789-1799) and it would have been used on nobility only. Assumptions are dangerous things, however. A blade beheading device invented by Dr. Antoine Louis, originally called a louisette, was used for the first time in 1792 to behead a highwayman called Pelletier. Its eventual name did come from another Frenchman – a humanitarian doctor called Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814) who argued passionately for its introdution during a debate in the French Assembly in 1789.

He said that it would be more humane than the current methods of capital punishment – hanging for commoners and beheading with a sword for nobility. But the guillotine wasn’t unique to France. Similar devices were used in Scotland, England, Germany, and other European countries, usually for noble executions. It also wasn’t confined to the ten blood-soaked years of the Revolution when between 17,000 and 40,000 died beneath its slanted blade. The last execution by guillotine in France was in 1977. After Guillotin’s death his children tried to rename the device, without success, and were ultimately forced to change their own surname – a wisely-rejected eponymnous connection. As a Frenchman carrying a long ladder once said to me in Paris – “Gardez lat tete. Il y aurez une revolution!” (mind your head, we’re going to have a revolution). Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling, Grace Inventors A Penny For Your Thoughts Inventors Contact Me/Links Where would we be without inventions like the parking meter???

So many visitors were taking his cigars, so Thomas Edison devised a plan to discourage the practice. He had several boxes of cigars custom-made with cabbage leaves. But when the offensive smelling stogies were delivered to his office, his secretary sent them on to his home where his wife went ahead and packed the items in his luggage, and the offensive items accompanied Mr. Edison on his business trip. This just goes to show you that even a genius can't outsmart his wife. Henry Waterman, of New York, invented the elevator in 1850. He intended it to transport barrels of flour. John Greenwood, also of New York invented the dental drill in 1790. The corkscrew was invented by M.L. Bryn, also of New York, in 1860. Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson, who was (you guessed it) from New York. Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for polio in 1952, in New York (aaah!). Four wheel roller skates were invented by James L. Plimpton in 1863. Can you guess where?

The first words that Thomas A. Edison spoke into the phonograph were, "Mary had a little lamb." In the early 1800s, a French silk weaver called Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a way of automatically controlling the warp and weft threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes in a string of cards. In 1843, a mathematician, Ada Byron, published the first computer programs. She based them on Jacquard's punch-card idea. Her programs were for the first general-purpose mechanical digital computer, that was just invented by Charles Babbage. As an advertising gimmick, Carl Meyer, nephew of lunch meat mogul Oscar Meyer, invented the company's "Wienermobile". On July 18, 1936, the first Oscar Mayer "Wienermobile" rolled out of General Body Company's factory in Chicago. The Wienermobile still tours the U.S. today. Gutenburg invented the printing press in the 1450's, and the first book to ever be printed was the Bible. It was, however, in Latin rather than English. Jeanne Pierre Francois Blanchard built the first parachute and tested it using a dog.

He put the dog in a basket equipped with his invention and then dropped it from a hot air balloon. It was a giant step forward for aviation history, but a giant step backwards in establishing the dog as man's best friend. The toothbrush was invented in 1498. The waffle iron was invented August 24, 1869. The alarm clock was not invented by the Marquis de Sade, as some suspect, but rather by a man named Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire, in 1787. Perversity, though, characterized his invention from the beginning. The alarm on his clock could ring only at 4 am. Rumor has it that Hutchins was murdered by his wife at 4:05 am on a very dark and deeply cold New England morning. Craven Walker invented the lava lamp, and its contents are colored wax and water. In 1916, Jones Wister of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania invented a rifle for shooting around corners. It had a curved barrel and periscopic sights. The same man who led the attack on the Alamo, Mexican Military General, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, is also credited with the invention of chewing gum.

The parachute was invented by Leonardo da Vinci in 1515. The guillotine was originally called a louisette. Named for Antoine Louis, the French surgeon who invented it. It became known as the guillotine for Joseph Ignace Guillotin, the French physician who advocated it as a more merciful means of execution than the noose or ax. Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors. Lazy Susans are named after Thomas Edison's daughter. He invented it to impress a gathering of industrialists and inventors. Cyano-acrylate glues (super glue) were invented by accident. The researcher was trying to make optical materials, and would test their properties by putting them between two prisms and shining light through them. When he tried the cyano-acrylate, he couldn't get the prisms apart. A device invented as a primitive steam engine by the Greek engineer Hero, about the time of the birth of Christ, is used today as a rotating lawn sprinkler. A machine has been invented that can read printed English books aloud to the blind, and it can do so at speed half again as fast as normal speech. Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented fiberglass.

Teflon was discovered in 1938. Alfred Nobel used a cellulose adhesive (nitrocellulose) as the chemical binder for nitroglycerin, which he used in his invention of dynamite. At the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, Richard Blechyden, and Englishman, had a tea concession. On a very hot day, none of the fairgoers were interested in hot tea. Blechyden served the tea cold—and invented iced tea. At the turn of the century, most light bulbs were hand-blown, and the cost of one was equivalent to half a day's pay for the average U.S. worker. Camel's-hair brushes are not made of camel's hair. They were invented by a man named Mr. Camel. Carbonated beverages became popular in 1832 after John Mathews invented an apparatus for charging water with carbon dioxide gas. Western Electric invented the loudspeaker which was initially called "loud-speaking telephone." Phone service was established at the White House one year after its invention. President Rutherford B. Hayes was the first to have phone service (1877-81).

Fifteen years after its invention in 1876, there were five million phones in America. Fifteen years after its invention, more than 33 million wireless phones were in the U.S. According to U.S. law, a patent may not be granted on a useless invention, on a method of doing business, on mere printed matter, or on a device or machine that will not operate. Even if an invention is novel or new, a patent may not be obtained if the invention would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the same area at the time of the invention. While Eleanor Abbott of San Diego, California was recuperating from polio in the 1940s, she occupied herself with devising games and activities for youngsters who had polio. One of her inventions was called "Candy Land." Her young friends liked the game so much, she submitted it to Milton Bradley Company where it was immediately accepted. Since then, CANDY LAND has been recognized internationally as a "child's first game." The modern zipper, the Talon Slide Fastener, was invented in 1913 but didn't catch on until after World War I.

The first dresses incorporating the zipper appeared in the 1930's. Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899. In 1966, Elliot Handler, one of the co-founders of Mattel, Inc. and part of the Barbie doll empire, was the inventor of Hot Wheelsï¿½. Handler experimented with axles and rotating wheels being attached to tiny model cars. The innovative gravity-powered car he developed had special low-friction styrene wheels. Hot Wheelsï¿½ have been clocked at speeds of up to 300 miles per hour. Dr. John Gorrie of Appalachicola, Florida, invented mechanical refrigeration in 1851. He patented his device on May 6, 1851. There is a statue which honors this "Father of Modern Day Air Conditioning" in the Statuary Hall of the Capitol building in Washington, DC. Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson. Eli Whitney made no money from the cotton gin because he did not have a valid patent on it.

The British import Spirograph was introduced in the United States in 1967 by Kenner and has racked up millions of dollars in sales. It was invented by a British electronics engineer, Denys Fisher, who was inspired to create the toy while doing research on a new design for bomb detonators for NATO. The Chinese invented eyeglasses. Marco Polo reported seeing many pairs worn by the Chinese as early as 1275, 500 years before lens grinding became an art in the West. The classic toy wagon was designed by Antonio Pasin, who founded his company in 1918. Pasin wanted to give his wagons a modern flair, and chose the word "radio" for what was then a new form of communication, and "flyer" for the wonder of flight — hence, "Radio Flyer." The coffee filter was invented by Melissa Bentz, in Germany in 1908. She pierced holes in a tin container, put a circular piece of absorbent paper in the bottom of it and put her creation over a coffee pot. Ferdinand Porsche, who later went on to build sports cars bearing his own name, designed the original 1936 Volkswagen.

In 1889, the first coin-operated telephone, patented by Hartford, Connecticut inventor William Gray, was installed in the Hartford Bank. Soon, "pay phones" were installed in stores, hotels, saloons, and restaurants, and their use soared. Local calls using a coin-operated phone in the U.S. cost only 5 cents everywhere until 1951. The first commercial vacuum cleaner was so large it was mounted on a wagon. People threw parties in their homes so guests could watch the new device do its job. The first VCR, made in 1956, was the size of a piano. Inventor Hugh Moore's paper cup factory was located next door to the Dixie Doll Company in the same downtown loft building. The word Dixie printed on the company's door reminded Moore of the story he had heard as a boy about "dixies," the ten dollar bank notes printed with the French word dix in big letters across the face of the bill by a New Orleans bank renowned for its strong currency in the early 1800s.

The "dixies," Moore decided, had the qualities he wanted people to associate with his paper cups, and with permission from his neighbor, he used the name for his cups - "Dixie Cups". It has been determined that less than one patented invention in a hundred makes any money for the inventor. It was Swiss chemist Jacques Edwin Brandenberger who invented cellophane, back in 1908. James J. Ritty, owner of a tavern in Dayton, Ohio, invented the cash register in 1879 to stop his patrons from pilfering house profits. James Ramsey invented a steam-driven motorboat in 1784. He ran it on the Potomac River, and the event was witnessed by George Washington. The monkey wrench is named after its inventor, a London blacksmith named Charles Moncke. The paper clip was patented by Norwegian inventor Johan Vaaler in 1899. Because Norway had no patent law at the time, he had to travel to Germany where he received his patent in 1900. His U.S. Patent was granted in 1901. The pop top can was invented in Kettering, Ohio by Ermal Fraze.

The power lawn mower was invented by Ransom E. Olds (of Oldsmobile fame) in 1915. The rickshaw was invented by the Reverend Jonathan Scobie, an American Baptist minister living in Yokohama, Japan, built the first model in 1869 in order to transport his invalid wife. Today it remains a common mode of transportation in the Orient. The shoestring was invented in England in 1790, Prior to this time all shoes were fastened with buckles. The single blade window cleaning squeegee was invented in 1936 by Ettore Sceccone and is still the most common form of commercial window cleaning today. The Super Ballï¿½ was born in 1965, and it became America's most popular plaything that year. By Christmas time, only six months after it was introduced by Wham-O, 7 million balls had been sold at 98 cents apiece. Norman Stingley, a California chemist, invented the bouncing gray ball. In his spare time, he had compressed a synthetic rubber material under 3,500 pounds of pressure per square inch, and eventually created the remarkable ball.

It had a resiliency of 92 percent, about three times that of a tennis ball, and could bounce for long periods. It was reported that presidential aide McGeorge Bundy had five dozen Super Ballsï¿½ shipped to the White House for the amusement of staffers. Roulette was invented by the great French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It was a by product of his experiments with perpetual motion. The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was albino. Edison improved the incandescent lamp in 1879, but he didn't actually invent it. Sir Humphrey Davy is reputed to be the true inventor of the electric light. He passed electricity through a platinum wire and caused an arc lamp to glow as early as 1802. However, Davy did not pursue the discovery. By the time Edison entered the scene, arc lamps had been burning for several decades, but were limited by short life spans. Edison developed a long-lasting filament light in 1877, and in 1879 produced the first long-lasting light bulb. The man who invented shorthand, John Gregg, was deaf.

The state of Maine was once known as the "Earmuff Capital of The World". Earmuffs were invented there by Chester Greenwood in 1873. Because he felt such an important tool should be public property, English chemist John Walker never patented his invention — matches. California police in the 1920s thought they had gotten the drop on a moonshiner. They raided what they thought was a still and found, instead, inventor Philo T. Farnsworth, working on something that was later to become television. The hypodermic needle was invented in 1853. It was initially used for giving injections of morphine as a painkiller. Physicians mistakenly believed that morphine would not be addictive if it by-passed the digestive tract. Thomas Edison’s first major invention was the quadruplex telegraph. Unlike other telegraphs at the time, it could send four messages at the same time over one wire. Inventor Gail Borden, Jr. invented condensed milk in the 1850's.

After his death in 1937, Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless telegraph was honored by broadcasters worldwide as they let the airwaves fall silent for two minutes in his memory. Bryan J. Patrie, a Stanford graduate student invented the Watercolor Intelligent Nightlight, which informs bleary-eyed midnight bathroom-goers whether the toilet seat is up or down... without turning on a blinding light. Patrie introduced the device in the early 1990's. He explained, "When you get within five feet of the dark commode, it will sense your motion. It looks to see if the room is dark. Then it looks upward by sending out an infrared beam. If it gets a reflection, it knows the seat is up. If it is, the red light comes on." Pez was invented in 1927 by Eduard Haas, an Austrian anti-smoking fanatic, who marketed peppermint-flavored PEZ as a cigarette substitute. The candy gets its name from the German word for peppermint, Pfefferminze. Haas brought the candy to the U.S. in 1952.

It bombed, so he reintroduced it as a children's toy, complete with cartoon heads and fruity flavors. One of the most secretive companies in the U.S., PEZ won't even disclose who currently owns the company. In the year 1886, Herman Hollerith had the idea of using punched cards to keep and transport information, a technology used up to the late 1970's. This device was constructed to allow the 1890 census to be tabulated. In 1896 the Tabulating Machine Company was founded by Hollerith. Twenty-eight years later, in 1924, after several take-overs the company became known as International Business Machines (IBM). The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he invented dynamite. The shoe string was invented in England in 1790. Until then shoes were fastened with buckles. Germany holds the title for most independent inventors to apply for patents. Noxema, the skin cream invented in 1914 by Baltimore pharmacist George Bunting, was originally sold as "Dr.

Bunting's Sunburn Remedy." Mr. Bunting changed the name to Noxema after a customer enthusiastically told him the cream had "knocked out his eczema." Thus, the cream that "knocks eczema" became "Noxema". George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera, hated having his picture taken. Root Beer was invented in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, Sr. Because Napoleon believed that armies marched on their stomachs, he offered a prize in 1795 for a practical way of preserving food. The prize was won by a French inventor, Nicholas Appert. What he devised was canning. It was the beginning of the canned food industry of today. Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899. Venetian blinds were invented in Japan. Benjamin Franklin was also the first person to try to electrocute a turkey. This experiment didn't work. The bird lived and it was America's Renaissance man who ended up absorbing the jolt.

"I meant to kill a turkey," said the shocked inventor, "and instead, I nearly killed a goose." The horse race starting gate is a Canadian invention, designed in the early 1900s by Philip McGinnis, a racetrack reporter from Huntingdon, Quebec. The device proved popular because it prevented arguments caused when horses started prematurely. The Direct Action Committee, a group pushing for nuclear disarmament, invented the peace symbol in 1958. The forked symbol is actually a composite of the semaphore signals "N" and "D," to stand for nuclear disarmament. Diet Coke was only invented in 1982. Fifty years ago the B. F. Goodrich Company, the American corporation known for its automobile tires, thought it was really on to something. Its engineers came up with the prototype of an atomic golf ball. The ball, with a radioactive core, would be easy to locate with a Geiger counter if hit into the rough. But the company abandoned the invention as unworkable. The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier. American sculptor, Alexander Calder, rigged the front door of his Paris apartment so that he could open it from his bathtub.

The first prototype of the sound-proof phone booth was built in 1877. Mr. Watson, Alexander Graham Bell's trusty assistant, used a bunch of bed blankets around a box. He created the booth to prevent his landlady from listening in on his conversations. Some callers didn't like using the early phone booths because the doors would get stuck, forcing users to fight their way out. The commercial wireless phone was first introduced in Chicago in 1982 by Ameritech. The first mobile car phones were located in the car's trunk, taking up nearly half of the space. When Alexander Graham Bell died on August 4, 1922, millions of phones went dead. In Bell's honor, all phones served by the Bell System in the USA and Canada went silent for one minute. One of the first telephone answering machines was developed in Switzerland during the 1950's. It took three days to install. Two days before Alexander Graham Bell married Mabel Hubbard in 1877, he gave her 99 percent of his company shares as a wedding gift. He kept a mere ten for himself.

Naugahyde, plastic "leather" was created in Naugatuck, Connecticut. As of 1940, total of ninety patents had been taken out on shaving mugs. It took three years of constant printing to complete Johann Gutenberg's famous Bible, which appeared in 1455 in two volumes, and had 1,284 pages. He reportedly printed 200 Bibles, of which 47 still exist. Madame Alexander dolls were the creation of Beatrice Alexander Behrman, the daughter of Russian immigrants. Mrs. Behrman, whose father operated New York's first doll "hospital," started making dolls in 1923, and her creations soon became famous for their molded heads and limbs, lifelike eyes, rooted hair and elaborate costumes. Mrs. Behrman sold the company to several New York investors in 1988, two years before she died at age 95. But America's first and only remaining doll manufacturer has not compromised her high standard of quality and unique craftsmanship. Today, most of the company's manufacturing is still done in Harlem, New York, and more than 500,000 dolls a year are sold.

Dr. Samuel Langley was able to get many model airplanes to fly, but on December 8, 1903, Langley's "human carrying flying machine", the aerodrome plunged into the Potomac River near Washington D.C., in front of photographers who were assembled to witness the event. Reporters around the country made fun of the idea that people could fly and nine days later, Wilbur and Orville Wright proved them wrong. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola. When using the first pay telephone, a caller did not deposit his coins in the machine. He gave them to an attendant who stood next to the telephone. Coin telephones did not appear to 1899. Spacewar is generally considered to be the first video game. Programmed in 1962 by MIT student Steve Russell, Spacewar was a simple game with ASCII graphics where two players would blast lasers at each other. At the time, the game only ran on massive, million-dollar mainframes the size of a small house.

Spacewar was circulated to other computer labs across the country, but only nerdy college students with access to mainframes could play it. 1962 was also the year in which University of Utah student Nolan Bushnell received his first exposure to video games, playing Spacewar in the University's computer lab. Bushnell spent the next seven years trying to reproduce Spacewar on a smaller, less expensive computer. When it was finally completed in 1971, Bushnell's Spacewar variation (dubbed "Computer Space"), bombed. For one thing, people found it too complicated. Bushnell gave up on it, quit his job at Ampex and founded Atari in 1972. Bushnell originally wanted to name the company Syzygy, but the name was already taken by a roofing company. That same year, Magnavox quietly released the Odyssey, the first home video game system. It had a game similar to Pong, and Magnavox later sued Atari for "copying" it (they won). Bushnell and Atari engineer Al Alcorn placed a prototype of their game in Andy Capp's Tavern, a Sunnyvale, California bar. Alcorn began work a home version of Pong.

His project was code named "Darlene" after a female coworker that worked with Alcorn at the time. In the fall of 1974, Alcorn began developing the "Darlene" system. Several months later Atari released Home Pong. While known as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, Leonardo da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk reveal its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicates the annual moisture. Self-made millionaire Cyrus Field championed the idea of a telegraph from England to Newfoundland. Britain quickly agreed to subsidize. Congress went along by a one-vote margin. That was in 1856. Laying cable was tough. It kept breaking. The first line - two years later - died almost immediately. But 10 years later, there were two working lines. Communications changed forever. The first lightweight luggage designed for air travel was conceived by aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. Donald F. Duncan, the man who made the yo-yo an American tradition, is also credited with popularizing the parking meter and introducing Good Humor "ice cream on a stick.

Eastman Kodak's Brownie camera cost $1.00 when it was introduced in 1900. Sylvan N. Goldman of Humpty Dumpty Stores and Standard Food Markets developed the shopping cart so that people could buy more in a single visit to the grocery store. He unveiled his creation in Oklahoma City on June 4, 1937. Frederick Winthrop Thayer of Massachusetts and the captain of the Harvard University Baseball Club received a patent for his baseball catcher's mask on February 12, 1878. The first coin operated machine ever designed was a holy-water dispenser that required a five-drachma piece to operate. It was the brainchild of the Greek scientist Hero in the first century AD. Ornithologists often use Scotch tape to cover cracks in the soft shells of fertilized pigeon eggs, allowing the eggs to hatch. Scotch tape has also been used as an anti-corrosive shield on the Goodyear Blimp. Q-TIPS Cotton Swabs were originally called "Baby Gays." In 1922, Leo Gerstenrang, an immigrant from Warsaw, Poland, who had served in the U.S.

Army during World War I and worked with the fledgling Red Cross Organization, founded the Leo Gerstenrang Infant Novelty Co. with his wife, selling accessories used for baby care. After the birth of the couple's daughter, Gerstenrang noticed that his wife would wrap a wad of cotton around a toothpick for use during their baby's bath and decided to manufacture a ready-to-use cotton swab. Gerstenrang developed a machine that would wrap cotton uniformly around each blunt end of a small stick of carefully selected and cured non-splintering birch wood, package the swabs in a sliding tray type box, sterilize the box, and seal it with an outer wrapping of glassine (later changed to cellophane). The phrase "untouched by human hands" became widely known in the production of cotton swabs. The world's first underground railway, between Paddington (Bishop's Road) and Farringdon Street - with trains hauled by steam engines - was opened by the Metropolitan Railway on January 10th 1863.

The initial section was six km (nearly four miles) in length, and provided both a new commuter rail service and an onward rail link for passengers arriving at Paddington, Euston and King's Cross main line stations to the City of London. The City and South London Railway opened the world's first deep-level electric railway on December 18th, 1890, from King William Street in the City of London under the River Thames to Stockwell. Today, the London Underground Limited (LUL) is a major business with 2.5 million passenger journeys a day, nearly 500 trains, serving over 260 stations, around 16,000 staff and vast engineering assets. Average scheduled train speed (including station stops) 20.5 mph (33 kmh). Maximum tunnel depth below mean sea level is 70ft (21.3m) Maximum tunnel depth below ground level is 221ft (67.4m) According to company lore, Ole Evinrude, a Norwegian immigrant, got the idea for an outboard motor while on a picnic with his sweetheart Bessie.

They were on a small island in Lake Michigan, when Bessie decided she wanted some ice cream. Ole obligingly rowed to shore to get some, but by the time he made it back the ice cream had melted. So Ole built a motor that could be attached to his rowboat, and founded the Evinrude company in 1909. The first underground and underwater rail system in the world, the New York City Subway, began operating in 1904. Almost 8,000 men participated in building the 21-mile (33.6 km) route. The project's chief engineer was William Barclay Parsons. The safety pin was patented in 1849 by Walter Hunt. He sold the patent rights for $400. An Englishman invented Scotland's national dress - the kilt. It was developed from the philamore - a massive piece of tartan worn with a belt and draped over the shoulder - by English industrialist Thomas Rawlinson who ran a foundry at Lochaber, Scotland in the early 1700s and thought a detachable garment would make life more comfortable for his workers.

It is recorded that the Babylonians were making soap around 2800 B.C. and that it was known to the Phoenicians around 600 B.C. These early references to soap and soap making were for the use of soap in the cleaning of textile fibers such as wool and cotton in preparation for weaving into cloth. Disc Jockey Alan Freed popularized the term "Rock and Roll." The patent number of the telephone is 174465. George Washington Carver invented peanut butter. The Roman civilization invented the arch. Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of the rocking chair. King Gilette spent 8 years trying to invent and introduce his safety razor. Thomas Edison had a collection of over 5,000 birds. Ben Franklin Facts: - Benjamin Franklin had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He got tired of constantly taking them off and putting them back on, so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of spectacles cut in half and put half of each lens in a single frame. Today, we call them bifocals. He was the youngest son of a youngest son of a youngest son of a youngest son.

He was the first American philosopher and the first American ambassador. He invented the harmonica, the rocking chair, the street lamp, the lightning conductor, and the Franklin stove - to name a few. He originated the first circulating library. He is the originator of Daylight Saving Time. He originated the first street-cleaning department. He was the first reformer of English spelling. He is the father of modern dentistry. He organized the first fire department. He was the founder of the Democratic party. He established the modern post-office system. He was a pioneer of the modern voting system for Congress. Dutch engineers have developed a computerized machine that allows a cow to milk itself. Each cow in the herd has a computer chip in its collar. If the computer senses that the cow has not been milked in a given period of time, the milk-laden animal is allowed to enter the stall. The robot sensors locate the teats, apply the vacuum devices, and the cow is milked. The machine costs a mere $250,000 and is said to boost milk production by 15%.

On November 23, 1835, Henry Burden of Troy, New York, developed the first machine for manufacturing horseshoes. Burden later oversaw the production of most of the horseshoes used by the Union cavalry during the Civil War. On the first neon sign, the word neon was spelled out in red by Dr. Perley G. Nutting, 15 years before neon signs became widely used commercially. Out of the 11 original patents made by Nikola Tessla, for the generation of hydroelectric energy, 9 are still in use, (unchanged) today. The windmill originated in Iran in AD 644. It was used to grind grain. Russian submarine designers are building military submarines out of concrete. Because concrete becomes stronger under high pressure, (C-subs) could settle down to the bottom in very deep water and wait for enemy ships to pass overhead. Concrete would not show up on sonar displays (it looks just like sand or rocks), so the passing ships would not see the sub lurking below. Two French toolmakers were the first engineers to put the engine in the front of the car.

This gave the car better balance, made it easier to steer, and made it much easier to get all your luggage in. The first umbrella factory in the U.S. was founded in 1928 in Baltimore, Maryland. In the early 1950's, Denver architect Temple H. Buell, often called the Father of the Mall, conceived of and built one of the first shopping malls in the U.S.: the Cherry Creek Mall. During one four-year period, Thomas Edison obtained 300 patents, or one every five days. The Wright Brothers spent time observing the flight of the buzzard to help them solve the mystery of flight. They realized that the bird retained balance in the air by twisting the tips of it's wings. By creating a wing warping method based upon this observation, the brothers were able to obtain a remarkable degree of maneuverability. The game that would become Scrabble was created by an unemployed architect, Alfred Mosher Butts in the early 1930s. He called it Lexiko, then Criss Cross Words and then sold the rights to James Brunot. In 1948 it was renamed Scrabble and was manufactured in a converted school house in Connecticut.

Bruno sold the game to Selchow and Righter, who were bought out by Coleco in 1987, and in 1989 Milton Bradley bought it. More than 100 million Scrabble games have been sold worldwide. Rubber bands were first made by Perry and Co. of London in 1845. In 1832 the Scottish surgeon Neil Arnott devised water beds as a way of improving patients' comfort. In 1769 the British designer Edward Beran enclosed wooden slats in a frame to adjust the amount of light let into a room. These became known as venetian blinds from their early use over Italianate windows. George Seldon received a patent in 1895 - for the automobile. Four years later, George sold the rights for $200,000. You could milk about six cows per hour by hand, but with modern machinery, you can milk up to 100 cows per hour. Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972), the mother of 12 children, had good reason to improve the efficiency and convenience of household items.

A pioneer in ergonomics, Gilbreth patented many devices, including an electric food mixer, and the trash can with step-on lid-opener that can be found in most households today. Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called his counterpart in Alameda, California. Kleenex tissues were originally used as filters in gas masks. The toilet was invented by an Englishman named Thomas Crapper. Do vegetarians eat animal crackers? Crazy but True antoine louis : definition of antoine louis and synonyms of antoine louis (English) Jump to: navigation , search Antoine Louis (February 13, 1723 – May 20, 1792) was a French surgeon and physiologist who was born in Metz . He was originally trained in medicine by his father, a surgeon-major at a local military hospital. As a young man he moved to Paris , where he served as gagnant-maîtrise at the Salpêtrière . In 1750 he was appointed professor of physiology, a position he maintained for forty years.

In 1764 he was appointed lifetime secretary to the Académie Royale de Chirurgie . Louis published numerous articles on surgery, including several biographies of surgeons who died during his lifetime. He also published the surgical aphorisms of Dutch physician Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738). Louis is credited with designing a prototype of the guillotine . This device however, is named after French physician Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814), who was an advocate of a more humane method of capital punishment . For a period of time after its invention, the guillotine was called a louisette . Another name for the sternal angle is the "angle of Louis", which is the point of junction between the manubrium and the body of the sternum .

References THE HISTORY OF THE GUILLOTINE - Google Groups THE HISTORY OF THE GUILLOTINE Showing 1-3 of 3 messages BOBBY ANALOG 12/7/07 8:56 PM You can lop it off, or chop it off, hack it off, or whack it off, but no matter how you slice it, removing the head of another human being is tedious, messy and difficult. Leave to the oh-so-civilized French to come up with a solution to this problem. Since heavy bladed weapons debuted around the time of the Bronze Age, beheading has been a favorite means of merciful capital punishment (relative to, say, crucifixion). For centuries, this was mostly accomplished using an axe or sword. But "merciful" decapitation was difficult work, requiring specialists with strong sword arms and precise aim. If the head doesn't come off on the first stroke, things can get ugly. Innovative inventors occasionally turned their attention to machines that would streamline the process of dislocating the head from the shoulders. While some of their efforts were perfectly functional, none of them really caught on outside of limited regional uses.

A French doctor named Joseph Ignace Guillotin, elected as a legislator shortly after the start of the French Revolution, felt that the nation's current methods of execution hanging and beheading by sword were cruel and unusual. First, Guillotin proposed that capital punishment be abolished entirely. Unfortunately, there was a revolution going on, so that just wasn't gonna happen. As a compromise, and out of the purest humanitarian impulses, Guillotin proposed in late 1789 that all executions be performed using a beheading machine, which he felt was the most merciful method available. Dr. Antoine Louis, the leading doctor of the day, designed a device to carry out the new law. Proud of his work, Louis called this device the louisette. But everyone else called it the guillotine, since the initial proposal was Guillotin's. In yet another example of why it never pays to do anything nice for anyone, the humanitarian and fervent opponent of the death penalty would be remembered by posterity as the guy who chopped people's heads off. Just to add injury to insult, it's not at all clear that the guillotine is an especially merciful means of execution.

Some have estimated that a decapitated head could remain conscious for up to 30 seconds after being removed, offering the victim a truly unique perspective on the world for those last few moments. Although most credible accounts place the total duration of consciousness after decapitation at less than seven seconds, speculation to the contrary has been fueled by grotesque anecdotes about heads blinking or even trying to speak after being removed. Needless to say, there are no firsthand accounts to illuminate the subject. As mentioned earlier, there was a revolution going on. The French Revolution made the American Revolution look like a day at the park. After centuries of monarchy, feudalism and virtual theocracy, the French threw out virtually every major institution of daily life, with bloody exuberance. The country became mired in intrigues, as the revolutionaries and the noble class tried to carve out new roles in the new order. After several false starts, the Revolution really got underway in 1792, when the monarchy was decisively ousted. Thousands of royalists were rounded up and jailed; about 2,000 were killed during riots, when angry mobs stormed the jails.

The Revolutionaries, now firmly entrenched in the seats of power, immediately abandoned their high, idealistic aspirations of democracy and human rights in favor of rule by terror, and terror by guillotine. Originally proposed as a humane form of execution, the guillotine instead became a grisly public spectacle used to cow enemies of the regime. Under the iron fist of Maximilien Robespierre, thousands were marched to the guillotine. Those who weren't executed were forced to participate in such absurdities as an all-new metric calendar and a bizarre made-up religion called the Cult of the Supreme Being, a fucked-up fascist spirituality based around a nameless deity whom Robespierre described as "He who bathes with delicious tears the eyes of the son pressed to the bosom of his mother." Arguably, the guillotine was serving its original humanitarian purpose by delivering its victims from the clutches of this lunatic, although those people being beheaded might beg to differ. The first official execution by guillotine took place in April 1792, its subject a petty armed robber. But there were bigger and better things ahead. In August, the Revolutionary crackdown began, and thousands of subversives were rounded up and executed in public spectacles.

The guillotine itself was simply a sharp, heavy blade suspended by a rope and pulley system. Frills were added later, such as a stockade fitting for the head, a spring-loaded switch to set the blade in motion and a safety lock. The victim's neck was placed below the blade, and the blade dropped from a height. A basket was usually placed under the victim's head to catch the noggin, although heads (being round) did have a tendency to roll away anyway. Unless, of course, someone was waiting there to grab it. One enterprising young woman named Marie Grosholz was a wax-model maker with a vision and connections within the Revolution. As the French royalty were executed one by one, she decided to preserve their visages for posterity by molding death masks from their decapitated heads. Later, Marie would be best known by her married name, under which she launched the now famous Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, which exhibited the spoils of her labor. Marie molded the heads of some of the guillotine's most famous victims, including Queen Marie Antoinette and Robespierre, who fell victim to his own success in 1794.

Although the guillotine's glory days came during the height of the French Revolution, its history hardly ended there. After its initial success in France, the machine was exported to other nations. Although similar devices had already been used throughout Europe, the guillotine proper became very popular in Germany, especially in Nazi Germany, where it was used for tens of thousands of executions during Hitler's tenure. The French themselves continued to use the device for nearly two centuries. The last public execution by guillotine was performed in 1939, but the device continued in use until 1977. In 1981, the French banned capital punishment, effectively bringing the guillotine's reign of terror to an end. (That's assuming, of course, that no one decides to mount a revival, which is probably not a safe assumption, given what we know about human history. We'll get back to you.) Timeline 10 Oct 1789 After failing his effort to get the death penalty abolished, French Assemblyman Joseph Ignace Guillotin proposes a law stipulating that executions be performed only by machine decapitation. 3 June 1791 Decapitation becomes the legally mandated form of execution in France.

25 April 1792 The first official execution by guillotine is performed. 21 January 1793 Deposed King Louis XVI guillotined. 16 Oct 1793 Deposed French queen Joséphe Jeanne Marie Antoinette sits in an open cart, enduring three hours of public ridicule as she is slowly driven around the streets of Paris. Finally, she is taken to the guillotine. Before she loses her head, Antoinette tells the crowd: "Farewell, my children, forever. I go to your Father." 28 July 1794 Maximilien Robespierre, former leader of the French Revolution, falls victim to his own favorite method of execution. 4 May 1854 Joseph Tussaud returns to London with the well-used blade of the guillotine he purchased from Clement Sanson, the last in a line of Sansons who held the office of Executioner of Paris for over 150 years. The blade is now part of Tussaud's Wax Museum collection. 17 June 1939 Last public execution by guillotine in France.

10 Sept 1977 Last execution by guillotine in France. --

Question: Which device was originally a Louisette, named after its surgeon/inventor Antoine Louis?
Answer: GUILLOTINE