Chicken Killer

One bright winter day in 1748, Benjamin Franklin staged an epochal picnic by the Schuylkill River. On the opposite bank were arrayed Leyden jars. Using the river for a conductor. Franklin electrically fired a pan of brandy. To his guests' amazement, a turkey was then electrocuted, cooked on an electrically turned spit over an electrically-lighted fire. After further experiments Franklin declared that electrocuted fowl "eats uncommonly tender."

Last week, 188 years too late to be original but still new enough to be of interest to most San Franciscans, the wholesale poultry store of Corriea Bros, was flamboyantly advertising ELECTROCUTED POULTRY. In their execution chamber a short endless belt conveyor moves alongside a longer conveyor which carries the fowl, fastened by the feet. In the Cornea store an attendant fastens the bird's head into a clamp from the short, inside belt. About a foot farther on, a lever is pressed down, completing an electrical circuit. Some 1,000 to 1,500 volts, depending on the size of the fowl, stepped up by transformers from ordinary house current, pass through the victim, shooting out its tail like an angry cock's, stunning it instantly. The fowl passes on to a revolving circular knife which slits its throat, then through a hot bath to the pluckers.

Six years ago a short, swart poultryman named Paul Onorato decided to do something about a fowl-killing device which would instantly stun and immobilize the victim. He conveyed his ideas to a crack German machinist named Emile Weinaug who built an electrocution device. When it proved sound in principle they took it to the San Francisco plant of Link-Belt Co., which enthusiastically took the machine under its corporate wing, gave Weinaug a job in the tool-room. Link-Belt plans to feel out its market before jumping into quantity production, sell the first machines for $1,500, part of which will go to Onorato and Weinaug as royalty.

Last week tall, blond Machinist Weinaug had not yet seen his machine at work in a store. He was in jail awaiting trial on charges of homicide (by pistol).

* Related in They Had Their Hour, by Marquis .lames.

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