Thirty Thousand Volts Killed Him. The Wall Brought Him Back.
A Seattle power-plant hand was dead for fifteen seconds in 1909 — until the shock hurled him into a cement wall and the impact restarted his heart.
SEATTLE. — Killed by an electric shock and practically dead for 15 seconds, then restored to life by another shock, was the uncanny experience of Scott Allen, who lies on a cot at the Seattle General Hospital. Physicians declare positively that Allen was dead for at least 15 seconds. The accident occurred at the power plant of the Snoqualmie Power Company. Allen was working at one of the switches when he closed the circuit. Thirty thousand volts passed through his body and he was instantly killed. At the same time the shock passed through his body there was a reaction and his body was hurled through the air and struck the cement walls of the switch room. The impact started the heart action again.
“Killed by an electric shock and practically dead for 15 seconds, then restored to life by another shock.”
Allen's revival was credited to a violent impact restarting his heart — the same principle that a century of defibrillators and workplace AEDs would make routine. The item also records, without a word of comment, how casually a power-plant hand could take 30,000 volts; the safety rules that make such arcs rarer today were won slowly, by workers and unions, after accidents like this one. What the paper filed as a wonder was, underneath, a failure of the workplace.
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