We all know about the great achievements of Thomas Edison, but here is a sicker side of Edison and some information many do not know.

In his efforts to show how great his inventions were and to try to discredit his competition, Thomas Edison executed many animals by electrocution to prove his point with the largest being an elephant named Top-sy. The video Edison shot of the executions">sick execution of Top-sy is below. Edison filmed the execution in front of a large crowd and released the movie later on.

1903: Thomas Edison stages his highly publicized electrocution execution of an elephant in order to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current, which, if it posed any immediate danger at all, was to Edison’s own direct current.

Edison had established direct current at the standard for electricity distribution and was living large off the patent royalties, royalties he was in no mood to lose when George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla showed up with alternating current.

Edison’s aggressive campaign to discredit the new current took the macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC (a killing process he referred to snidely as getting “Westinghoused”). Stray dogs and cats were the most easily obtained, but he also zapped a few cattle and horses.

Edison got his big chance, though, when the Luna Park Zoo at Coney Island decided that Top-sy, a cranky female elephant who had squashed three handlers in three years (including one idiot who tried feeding her a lighted cigarette), had to go.

Park officials originally considered hanging Top-sy but the SPCA objected on humanitarian grounds, so someone suggesting having the elephant “ride the lightning,” a practice that had been used in the American penal system since 1890 to dispatch the condemned. Edison was happy to oblige.

This portion of Edison’s film Electrocuting an Elephant is taken from a German television show.

When the day came, Top-sy was restrained using a ship’s hawser fastened on one end to a donkey engine and on the other to a post. Wooden sandals with copper electrodes were attached to her feet and a copper wire run to Edison’s electric light plant, where his technicians awaited the go-ahead.

In order to make sure that Top-sy emerged from this spectacle more than just singed and angry, she was fed cyanide-laced carrots moments before a 6,600-volt AC charge slammed through her body. Officials needn’t have worried. Top-sy was killed instantly and Edison, in his mind anyway, had proved his point.

A crowd put at 1,500 witnessed Top-sy’s execution, which was filmed by Edison and released later that year as Electrocuting an Elephant.

Electrocuting an elephant video by Thomas Edison

In the end, though, all Edison had to show for his efforts was a string of dead animals, including the unfortunate Top-sy, and a current that quickly fell out of favor as AC demonstrated its superiority in less lethal ways to become the standard.

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