They gotta be kidding.

In my never ending search for the stupid in history, and my absurd success at finding buckets of examples, I have wondered into a rather dark arena today. As readers to this blog have noted, much of my focus has been on the ill guided but enthusiastic side of inventions. The car that was too long to turn around a normal city corner or the ancient aviator with the equivalent of 400 pounds of dynamite strapped to his back. The giddy excitement of discovery tempered by flaming crashes.

For today I was going to peel out a short (as always) backgrounder on the electric chair. Once I got looking a bit deeper though, it got too gruesome to describe.

I was left with the nicknames the more popular (now that's really sick) chairs had. That alone is enough to give you an idea.

So, how about Old Smokey? That's the one that executed Bernard Hauptmann. It resides in New Jersey.

Not to be outdone is Old Sparky. This cheerful moniker was given to chairs used in over a half dozen states. A chair of this name first built in 1912 was actually used in 2008. They made them to last then. None of that made in China mass produced stuff.

Now this one has a real scary name: Yellow Mama. It's home is the Kilby State Prison, Montgomery, Alabama. It's unique name comes from the fact it was originally painted with yellow highway paint.

And in Louisiana, they simply call the electric chair Gruesome Gertie. No commentary or descriptive adjectives. You knew it was gonna hurt.

I will leave you with whatever imagery these nicknames conjure up. But Sparky and Smokey? By the way, that's one of the Old Sparkey's up top.