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Electrocution of Topsy at Coney Island - 1903
Photographed January 3, 1903. Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
It is one of the few if not the only film from the Edison Manufacturing Company that Thomas Edison personally arranged.
The elephant Topsy, which had been purchased from Adam Forepaughs Circus, helped to build Coney Island as a working animal before being used for entertainment there. Topsy killed three men in three years. Each one had been known to abuse the animal in their care. The last victim fed the animal a lighted cigarette on purpose as if it were a peanut causing Topsy to react like an injured animal, lashing at the man with angry pain and killing him.
The decision was made to put the animal down. Thomas Edison saw an opportunity to turn the decision into a publicity event. He had been competing with Nikola Tesla, a former employee of his, over the best system of electricity for common use. Edison proposed DC or Direct Current, while Tesla and Westinghouse were advocating the use of AC or Alternating Current. Edison had experimented on cats and dogs for some time and thought a large animal like Topsy would be an excellent example of the superiority of Direct Current for daily use and capital punishment. He insisted AC was more dangerous than Direct Current.
The film was arranged with an eye towards exposure of his theory. He can be seen in the film leading the elephant to the spot in front of the camera. Though before finally deciding to perform the electrocution, as a last resort Topsy had been fed poison several times that day with no rapid success. The moment arrived, the camera rolled, the act was done.
ShareThisPhotographic Studies in Hypnosis - 1940's
Hypnosis. Subconscious Suggestion. Somnambulism.
In this film Professor LF Beck of University of Oregon conducts a live experiment in hypnosis on an obviously pliant participant.
Upon watching it, one viewer recently called the film sadistic, like some sort of proto-Ludovico Treatment slouching towards Clockwork Orange.
To modern eyes, he could be seen as a latter day Dr. Caligari. However, Beck was known in psychoanalytic academic circles during the 1930s and 40s for his seminal work, Hypnotic Identification of an Amnesia Victim. In it he disputes, "in general, however, the hypnotized person has been depicted as an automaton, and memory disturbances hypnotically induced have been attributed to the instructions the hypnotizer gave."
ShareThisColt 45 Malt Liquor commercial - 1960's
Before Colt 45 was associated with Billy D. Williams and "that dynamite taste," the famed Malt Liquor seems to have been marketed towards the white and/or middle class alcoholic demographic, a type whom nothing seems to faze.
Malt liquor is a North American term referring to a type of beer with high alcohol content. In legal statutes, the term often includes any alcoholic beverage above or equal to 5% alcohol by volume made with malted barley. In common parlance, however, it is used for high alcohol beers made with ingredients and processes resembling those in American-style lager. Malt liquor is distinguished from other beers of high alcohol content in that the brewing process is seen by many as targeting high alcohol content and economy rather than quality. However, this label is subject to the viewpoint of the brewer, as there are indeed examples of brews containing high-quality, expensive ingredients that brewers have chosen to label as "malt liquors".
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