The Last Days of Night

by Graham Moore

The paper went on to suggest, in language of unvarying vehemence, that alternating current was likely to fry the bones of any child within a hundred feet of its use. Because it ran at twice the voltage of direct current, it was, so Harold P. Brown argued, twice as deadly. There was, moreover, no legitimate scientific reason to prefer alternating current to direct; only the marketplace had caused these devious merchants of death to adopt this crooked technology. And, finally, the paper named the main proponent of this deadly system: George Westinghouse. “A villain who apparently will stoop to new lows to make an extra dollar off the naïve and gullible. “To prevent the wholesale loss of human life,” concluded Harold Brown’s editorial, “all alternating current, such as that offered by George Westinghouse, must be banned immediately by the legislature of this state.”