"I have lately made an Experiment in Electricity that I desire never to repeat."

Reminds me of a curiosity seen during a tour of the historic Filoli mansion: An appliance that cooks food by running mains power through it. Apparently someone in the early 20th century thought this was a good idea. I don&#x27;t remember the exact food it was used for -- maybe hotdogs, or bacon?<p>(Seen here, on the counter:) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.pinimg.com&#x2F;originals&#x2F;a0&#x2F;f7&#x2F;35&#x2F;a0f7352484c9426ea188f63fb42d38b9.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.pinimg.com&#x2F;originals&#x2F;a0&#x2F;f7&#x2F;35&#x2F;a0f7352484c9426ea188...</a>

The article never gives any context for the quote in the headline. It doesn’t even quote it again in the body.

Poultry-related hazardous experimentation also did for Sir Francis Bacon:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hauntedpalaceblog.wordpress.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;04&#x2F;25&#x2F;the-strange-case-of-sir-francis-bacon-and-the-frozen-chicken&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hauntedpalaceblog.wordpress.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;04&#x2F;25&#x2F;the-stran...</a>

&gt; The Founding Father once infamously electrocuted himself while trying to kill a turkey with electricity.<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure you only get to &quot;electrocute&quot; yourself once. Especially in 1743.<p>I wonder- his lack of grounding may just be what saved his life. If the mentioned chain connected to the outsides of both jars were grounded then there might have been a short across his heart.

What&#x27;s really interesting about Franklin electrocuting chickens is that electrocution went on to become the predominant method of killing chickens in the US poultry industry until 2017 when the largest purchaser of chickens, McDonalds, switched to using asphyxiating gas because activists were upset about the electrocution. Non-McDonalds chicken though is still killed the &quot;old fashioned&quot; way - through electrocution pioneered by Franklin. The electrocution doesn&#x27;t actually kill the birds, it stuns them and makes them rigid prior to a giant saw cutting off their heads.<p>Here&#x27;s a video of a typical poultry plant, though this one is in Mexico it&#x27;s identical to US operations: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=hMSNGZh60zY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=hMSNGZh60zY</a><p>(Warning: do not watch if you can&#x27;t handle it it&#x27;s exactly as described.)

&gt;The Founding Father once infamously electrocuted himself while trying to kill a turkey with electricity<p>Electrocution is death, or (more recently) serious injury, by electric shock. It does not mean &quot;harmlessly shocked&quot;.<p>I have seen this error more and more often. It seems that the word is evolving to become more broad over time, since it&#x27;s the only handy verb we have for &quot;the application of current to a living thing&quot;. It originally meant only execution, hence the construction: electricity + execution. Then it broadened to any death, and then serious injury, and now it&#x27;s being used for harmless shocks.

I have seen assertions that he did not claim to have actually done the kite experiment, but only proposed it, and was after assumed to have done it. Maybe after a while he got embarrassed to correct people?

Wow, 10 lb turkeys. He would be aghast at trying to knock off a 22 lb Foster Farms turkey. :-)<p>One could make the argument that a turkey cooker that used an electrical current would be both more efficient and result in a more even cooking. Assuming the turkey was brined before cooking (fairly common), as the brine evaporates the conductivity goes down and the current would redirect to lest cooked areas. As a result cooking the entire bird evenly.

Fortunately they did not give up, and today millions of chicken are instantly killed with electricity followed by decapitation

And this is why you kill mechanically, even if you&#x27;re going to use electrodes to get better quality meat.