High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the body. This execution method was created by employees of Thomas Edison during the War of Currents, and has been used only in the United States and, for a period of several decades, in the Philippines (its first use there in 1924 under American occupation, last in 1976).