Formation of new institute sparked new ideas



May 13, 1844, the Institute for Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) formed in New York.

Within days, exotic ideas were careening around inside the craniums of these kooks * and it was they, we at ABE Ministry confidently assert, absent even the tiniest bit of evidence, it was they, we repeat, who thunk-up the idea of the electric chair which was to feature so prominently as a way to kill deserving criminals and also appear prominently in Hollywood Movies as an object to be faux-feared by James Cagney so as to set a good example for angels with dirty faces **





* These engineers would often load-up their beakers with tiny mice and they set the beakers over souped-up Bunsen Burners and boil the shit out of the mice until they blowed-up.

Why are we doing this, you ask?  Well, because the Jet Propulsion Laboratory asked us to

 What?  

We said, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory hasn't even been invented yet; neither have jets...

O

** I think Rod Stewart was in a group named that