The harnessing of electricity by the great inventors of the Gilded Age introduced the world to the miracle of light at all hours of the day. But exposure to electricity's raw power was dangerous to man and a few thought this useful in the employment of the state’s darkest responsibilities -- capital punishment.

This is the story of the first electric chair, the peculiar rivalry which helped create it -- an epic feud between Edison and Westinghouse, between DC and AC -- and its fateful effects upon the life and punishment upon a man named William Kemmler, the first to be killed in this morbid seat.