The Alternating Current Will Kill People

Francis Ellington Leupp records this remark in George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements (1918), in which George Westinghouse responds directly to critics — above all Thomas Edison — who were campaigning to discredit alternating current (AC) as lethally dangerous during the "War of the Currents" of the late 1880s. Edison famously lobbied to have AC used in the electric chair, hoping to associate it with execution. Westinghouse's reply reframed the debate: the question was not whether AC could kill under extreme misuse, but whether its engineering safeguards made it safer in normal use — which they did.