21. Joseph Guillotin and the beheading machine
A myth provably false but presenting a stubborn resistance to dying out is that the beheading machine known as the guillotine was invented by French doctor Joseph Guillotin. Some versions of the tale include the additional tidbit – also false – that Guillotin died by being executed on the machine. There were in fact several machines developed for the purpose of quickly removing the head from the human body over the centuries, but that which most resembles the guillotine of France was developed by a German, Tobias Schmidt, working with the Frenchman Louis Antoine. Their model featured an angled blade, which severed the head more cleanly. Guillotin did nothing more than propose the use of the machine in French executions.
Joseph Guillotin was a physician and politician who was an early opponent of capital punishment. Recognizing that the form of punishment was unlikely to be banned in France, he proposed beheading as the universal means of execution, replacing the various systems in use (which include the rack and other tortures) with a mercifully quick death. He lobbied for the machine to be used and his support was so vocal that it became known in France as Guillotin’s machine, which quickly became simplified as the guillotine. During the French Revolution, its use was enthusiastically embraced. Guillotin did not meet his end on the guillotine however, he died in Paris in 1814, of natural causes.