Until recently, criminals in the US were executed using an electric chair. Nowadays a different form of execution by lethal injection is practised. Before the electric chair, the condemned criminals were hanged. However, a dentist Dr Alfred P. Southwick happened to witness a drunken man getting electrocuted and dying instantly when he touched a live electric generator. He was horrified. However, it later occurred to him that this method of electrocution could be used to humanely execute condemned criminals. As a dentist he worked using chairs, so the idea of the instrument occurred in the form of a chair.
