Template:Did you know nominations/George Fell


 * The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as |this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:27, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

George Fell

 * ... that Dr. George Fell (pictured), a pioneer of life saving mechanical respiration techniques in the 1880s, also designed the first electric chair?



Created/expanded by Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk). Self-nominated at 20:07, 29 March 2016 (UTC).


 * Symbol question.svg Article is new enough and long enough. Many sources are offline; enough appears in the web-accessible sources to verify the basic facts, although I'm not sure whether the Keppel source would pass WP:RS. Neutrality is good. Article could use a pass from a copy editor, but that's not of primary concern here. I corrected formatting on the hook, which is short enough and interesting. Wonder if it might not be more accurate to say he "helped design" the first electric chair. In fact, the Trubuhovich source says Fell was asked to help redesign a chair that had been designed by someone else. Is it even accurate to say he helped design the first electric chair? Maybe "helped design the first electric chair used for an execution" or something? QPQ review doesn't seem to be an issue here, as the nominator only has two previous DYKs listed on his/her talk page. Image is good to go as pre-1923 PD. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 19:30, 1 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment: I can see how the hook can be confusing. The road to the electric chair was a confused nine year process involving two state commissions, a half dozen inventors, scores of medical, electrical, and legal experts, and corporate dirty tricks thrown in for good measure. All we can say for sure about Fell's role short hand is that he "designed the first electric chair" (the one they put under William Kemmler in 1890). It was always going to be some kind of chair for most of 9 year process and someone was going to draw the thing up, and it ended up being Fell. One of the problems I kept hitting is you get allot of wrong claims in the boiled down histories on the subject. Trubuhovich's claim (actually Richard Moran's claim) that Harold P. Brown designed a previous chair seems to be one of the wrong ones. The New York Medico-Legal Society was designing the chair and Brown was their AC consultant and only handled AC matters as far as I can see. This IEEE paper notes Brown turned down designing the chair and the job fell to Fell. If we need to change the hook to show this was an ongoing design effort we could word it "had a role in designing the first electric chair." Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
 * ALT2: ... that Dr. George Fell (pictured), a pioneer of life saving mechanical respiration techniques in the 1880s, also had a role in designing the first electric chair used for an execution? (added Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:02, 2 April 2016 (UTC))
 * Symbol confirmed.svg Yes, I think this is better. Thank you. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 00:21, 5 April 2016 (UTC)