It
separated highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier's head from the rest of
his body.
The device was perfected - though not invented- by Doctor Joseph
Ignace Guillotin (1738 - 1814). The 'e' at the end of the noun is a
later, British, addition. Ironically, he belonged to a movement
seeking to abolish capital punishment altogether.
Guillotine-like implements were used on delinquents from the nobility
in Germany, Italy, Scotland and Persia long before the good doctor's
era. Guillotin and German engineer and harpsichord maker, Tobias
Schmidt, improved and industrialized it. It was Schmidt who
transformed the blade, changing it from round to the familiar form and
placing it at an oblique, 45 degree, angle. The process of severing
the head - the blade falling, cutting through the tissues and severing
the head - took less than half a second. More than 40,000 people were
guillotined during the French Revolution and in its immediate
aftermath (1789-1795).
Nor was the guillotine abandoned after the French Revolution. As late
as 1870, one Leon Berger, an assistant executioner and carpenter,
added a spring system, which stopped the mouton at the bottom of the
groves, a lock/blocking device at the lunette and a new release
mechanism for the blade.
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