# Edison Manufacturing releases film of the electrocution of Topsy the elephant

Date: 1903

## The fact

In January 1903 at Luna Park, Coney Island, the elephant Topsy was poisoned, strangled and electrocuted. Edison Manufacturing Company filmed Electrocuting an Elephant and sold it. The killing was a park decision; the film is an [Edison](/people/thomas-edison) company product.

## Context

The current war’s publicity logic outlived Pearl Street. Using electricity as a public killing method for entertainment is the welfare issue stored here. It is not a human capital-punishment duplicate of Kemmler.

Thomas Edison is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Library of Congress holds the Edison film record. Independent histories of the current war and of Coney Island independently date 4 January 1903.

Official or archival record: Edison Company Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings (https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/; Library of Congress).

## Significance

Cruelty-as-spectacle path. High confidence on the film and date.

A company product can be a Fact about the founder’s firm without a signed order in his pocket.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Edison company film of Topsy’s 1903 electrocution. Not established: that Thomas Edison personally attended, or that this film caused later animal-protection statutes.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Thomas Edison: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-edison

## Drivers

- Protection of Minority Rights: https://factrail.ai/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights

## Sources

- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-edison-westinghouse-and-tesla-battled-over-electricity-120438080/
- https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-edison-topsy-film-1903