science

Old Smokey

Old Smokey is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Old Smokey rather than just read about it. In short: Old Smokey is a euphemistic name given to the state prison electric chair in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. The term has sometimes been used to refer to electric chairs in general, and not the one used in any specific state.

Key takeaways

Old Smokey belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Old Smokey to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Old Smokey from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Old Smokey is a euphemistic name given to the state prison electric chair in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. The term has sometimes been used to refer to electric chairs in general, and not the one used in any specific state.

New Jersey New Jersey's Old Smokey is on display at the New Jersey State Police Museum. The chair's most notorious target was Richard Hauptmann, the man behind the Lindbergh kidnapping. The chair at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton was used in the electrocution of 159 men for capital punishment in New Jersey, starting with Saverio DiGiovanni on December 11, 1907, and ending with Ralph Hudson on January 22, 1963, which also was the final execution carried out in New Jersey. Hauptmann was executed on April 3, 1936. After the death penalty was abolished nationwide in 1972 following Furman v. Georgia, the chair was moved to storage and the chamber was converted to a visitor center. In the 1980s, the chair was put on exhibit at the now-defunct Capital Punishment Museum, housed in a building at the New Jersey State Corrections Academy; after its curator died in 1995, the chair was sent to the New Jersey State Museum and later was transferred to the New Jersey State Police Museum in Ewing Township, where it remains on display. New Jersey abandoned electrocution in favor of lethal injection in 1983, then abolished capital punishment altogether in 2007.

Pennsylvania The Pennsylvania electric chair was used in the electrocution of 348 men and two women for capital punishment in Pennsylvania at what is now SCI Rockview, starting with the execution of John Talap on February 15, 1915, and ending with the execution of Elmo Lee Smith on April 2, 1962. The chair was placed into storage in 1971 and reassembled in 1985, but never was used again after Pennsylvania abolished electrocution in 1990 as an execution method, in favor of lethal injection. It is stored at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, and has never been displayed.

Tennessee

The electric chair at the Tennessee State Prison in Nashville also was nicknamed "Old Smokey", and was used to execute 125 people for capital punishment in Tennessee between July 13, 1916 (Julius Morgan) and November 7, 1960 (William Tines). After switching its primary method of execution to lethal injection in 2000, Tennessee has given prisoners sentenced to capital punishment before then a choice between lethal injection or electrocution; the chair was moved to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution and refurbished by Fred A. Leuchter. In 2014, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed a bill making the electric chair a backup method of execution if the drugs used in a lethal injection are not available. After the original chair was removed, it was put on display at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington D.C., where it was until it and everything else there got moved to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for the Alcatraz East Crime Museum, where it resides today. Since the chair was refurbished, Tennessee has executed six prisoners by electrocution:

Daryl Holton (September 12, 2007) Edmund Zagorski (November 1, 2018) David Earl Miller (December 6, 2018) Stephen Michael West (August 15, 2019) Lee Hall (December 5, 2019) Nicholas Todd Sutton (February 20, 2020)

See also Old Sparky, the nickname given to several states' electric chairs Gruesome Gertie, the nickname given to Louisiana's electric chair Yellow Mama, the nickname given to Alabama's electric chair List of people executed by electrocution

References

External links New Jersey State Police Museum

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Old Smokey

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Old Smokey claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Old Smokey before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Old Smokey ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Old Smokey

In research: Old Smokey appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Old Smokey in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Old Smokey is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1963 disestablishments, Capital punishment in New Jersey, Capital punishment in Pennsylvania, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Old Smokey outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Old Smokey in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Old Smokey means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Old Smokey out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Old Smokey in simple terms?

Why does Old Smokey matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Old Smokey?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Old Smokey.