Able Ogle

For seven years, George M. Ogle, able Manhattan power engineer, has been ogling at the secrets of life, death and "juice''* as exhibited by the electric chair at Sing Sing penitentiary. Last week Mr. Ogle announced some of the results of his observations and experiments :

1) The healthier a person is the easier he is to electrocute. Sick convicts require 2,700 volts for painless death; normal ones need only 2,000 volts. Engineer Ogle would have physicians look more carefully into the electrical condition of human organs in the diagnosis of disease. This, he believes, is a comparatively unexplored field of medicine.

2) The skin offers the chief resistance to electric current. If the skin were broken, one might be electrocuted on 25 or 50 volts, on currents as low as one ampere.

3) Able Engineer Ogle and others have made painless death a reality at Sing Sing. Once it took three shocks to kill; now only one is necessary. Properly applied electric current reaches the brain in 1/240 of a second; thus, the loss of consciousness is almost instantaneous. Compared to this, the prick of a needle at the base of the skull (taking 1/10 of a second to reach the brain) is sluggish.

*Slang term meaning electric current, used by doorbell repairmen, high school radio tinkerers, baffled babbitts. Astute Engineer Ogle would never be guilty of using such a misnomer.