Towards the end of his life, a man who bore the “monstrous”, in his own opinion, name Guillotin, turned to the authorities of Napoleonic France with a request to change the name of the terrible execution device of the same name, but his request was rejected. Then the nobleman Joseph Ignace Guillotin, mentally asking for forgiveness from his ancestors, thought about how to get rid of the once respectable and respectable family name ...

It is not known for certain whether he succeeded in doing this, but the descendants of Guillotin disappeared forever from the field of view of historians.

Joseph Ignace Guillotin was born on May 28, 1738 in the provincial town of Saintes in the family of not the most successful lawyer. Nevertheless, from a young age he absorbed a certain special sense of justice, passed on to him by his father, who would not agree to defend the accused for any money if he was not sure of their innocence. Joseph Ignace allegedly himself persuaded his parent to give him up for education to the Jesuit fathers, suggesting to put on the cassock of a clergyman until the end of his days.

It is not known what averted the young Guillotin from this venerable mission, but at a certain time he, unexpectedly even for himself, turned out to be a student of medicine, first at Reims, and then at the University of Paris, which he graduated with outstanding results in 1768. Soon, his lectures on anatomy and physiology could not accommodate everyone: portraits and fragmentary memoirs depict the young doctor as a small, well-tailored man with elegant manners, possessing a rare gift of eloquence, in whose eyes a certain enthusiasm shone.

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin

Birthday: 05/28/1738
Birthplace: Sainte, France
Year of death: 1814
Citizenship: France

One can only wonder how radically the views of someone who once claimed to be a minister of the church have changed. Both Guillotin's lectures and his inner convictions revealed in him a complete materialist. The great doctors of the past, such as Paracelsus, Agrippa of Nettesheim or father and son van Helmont, had not yet been forgotten, it was still difficult to abandon the idea of ​​the world as a living organism. However, the young scientist Guillotin already questioned Paracelsus's assertion that “nature, the cosmos and all its givens are one great whole, an organism where all things are consistent with each other and there is nothing dead. Life is not only movement, not only people and animals live, but also any material things. There is no death in nature - the extinction of any givenness, there is immersion in another womb, the dissolution of the first birth and the formation of a new nature.

All this, according to Guillotin, was pure idealism, incompatible with the fashionable, eager to dominate the new materialistic beliefs of the Enlightenment. He, as befitted the young naturalists of his time, incomparably more admired his acquaintances - Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Holbach, Lamerty. From his medical chair, Guillotin with a light heart repeated the new spell of the era: experience, experiment - experiment, experience. After all, a person is primarily a mechanism, it consists of screws and nuts, you just need to learn how to tighten them up - and everything will be in order. Actually, these thoughts belonged to Lamerty - in his work “Man-Machine”, the great enlightener asserted ideas that are very recognizable even today that a person is nothing more than a complexly organized matter. Those who think that thinking presupposes the existence of a disembodied soul are fools, idealists and charlatans. Who ever saw and touched this soul? The so-called "soul" ceases to exist immediately after the death of the body. And this is obvious, simple and clear.

Therefore, it is quite natural that the doctors of the Paris Medical Academy, to which Guillotin belonged, were so unanimously indignant when, in February 1778, the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, widely known for discovering the magnetic fluid and the first to use hypnosis for treatment, appeared in the capital. Mesmer, who developed the ideas of his teacher van Helmont, empirically discovered the mechanism of mental suggestion, however, he considered that a special liquid circulates in the healer's body - a "magnetic fluid", through which celestial bodies act on the patient. He was convinced that gifted healers could pass these fluids to other people and thus heal them.

... On October 10, 1789, the members of the Constituent Assembly made a lot of noise and did not want to leave the meeting. Monsieur Guillotin introduced the most important law concerning the death penalty in France. He stood before the legislators, solemn, inspired, and spoke and spoke. His main idea was that the death penalty should also be democratized. If until now in France the method of punishment depended on the nobility of origin - criminals from the common people were usually hanged, burned or quartered, and only the nobles were honored with beheading with a sword - now this ugly situation should be radically changed. Guillotin hesitated for a moment and glanced at his notes.

“In order to be convincing enough today, I spent a lot of time in conversations with Monsieur Charles Sanson ...

At the mention of this name, a mute silence instantly fell in the hall, as if everyone at the same time suddenly lost the power of speech. Charles Henri Sanson was the hereditary executioner of the city of Paris. The Sanson family held, so to speak, a monopoly on this occupation from 1688 to 1847. The position was passed on in the Sanson family from father to son, and if a girl was born, then her future husband was doomed to become an executioner (if, of course, there was one). However, this work was very, very highly paid and required absolutely exceptional skill, so the executioner began to teach his son his "art" as soon as he was fourteen.

Guillotin, in fact, often went to Monsieur Sanson's house on the Rue Château d'Eau, where they talked and often played music in a duet: Guillotin played the harpsichord quite well, and Sanson played the violin. During the conversations, Guillotin asked Sanson with interest about the difficulties of his work. I must say that Sanson rarely had a chance to share his worries and aspirations with a decent person, so he did not have to pull his tongue for a long time. So Guillotin learned about the traditional methods of mercy of the people of this profession. When, for example, a condemned man is brought to the stake, the executioner usually sets up a hook with a sharp end to mix the straw, exactly opposite the heart of the victim - so that death overtakes him before the fire with painful slow relish begins to devour his body. As for wheeling, this torture of unprecedented cruelty, then Sanson admitted that the executioner, who always has poison in the form of tiny pills in the house, as a rule, finds the opportunity to quietly slip it on the unfortunate person in between tortures.

“So,” continued Guillotin in the ominous silence of the hall, “I propose not just to unify the method of capital punishment, because even such a privileged method of killing as decapitation with a sword also has its drawbacks. “It is possible to complete a case with a sword only if three most important conditions are observed: the serviceability of the instrument, the dexterity of the performer and the absolute calmness of the condemned,” Deputy Guillotin continued to quote Sanson, “in addition, the sword must be straightened and sharpened after each blow, otherwise the goal will be quickly achieved in public execution becomes problematic (there were cases that it was possible to cut off the head almost on the tenth attempt). If you have to execute several at once, then there is no time for sharpening, which means that stocks of “inventory” are needed - but this is not an option either, since the convicts, forced to watch the death of their predecessors, slipping in pools of blood, often lose their presence of mind and then the executioner henchmen have to work like butchers in a slaughterhouse ... "

- Enough about that! We've heard enough! - suddenly a voice shot up nervously, and the assembly suddenly became agitated - those present hissed, whistled, hissed.

“I have a cardinal solution to this terrible problem,” he called out over the noise.

And in a clear, clear voice, as in a lecture, he informed those present that he had developed a drawing of a mechanism that would allow him to instantly and painlessly separate the head from the body of the convict. He repeated - instantly and absolutely painlessly. And triumphantly shook some papers in the air.

At that historic meeting, it was decided to consider, investigate and clarify the project of the "miraculous" mechanism. In addition to Guillotin, three more people came to grips with them - the king's physician surgeon Antoine Louis, the German engineer Tobias Schmidt and the executioner Charles Henri Sanson.

... Thinking of benefiting mankind, Dr. Guillotin carefully studied those primitive mechanical structures that were used to take life ever before in other countries. As a model, he took an ancient device used, for example, in England from the end of the 12th to the middle of the 17th century - a chopping block and something like an ax on a rope ... Something similar existed in the Middle Ages in Italy and Germany. Well, then - he went headlong into the development and improvement of his "brainchild".

History reference:there is an opinion that The guillotine was NOT invented in France. Actually a guillotine from Halifax, Yorkshire. The "Gallows from Halifax" consisted of two five-meter wooden poles, between which there was an iron blade, which was fixed on a crossbar filled with lead. This blade was controlled with a rope and a gate. The original documents show that at least fifty-three people were executed with this device between 1286 and 1650. The medieval city of Halifax lived on the cloth trade. Huge cuts of expensive fabric were dried on wooden frames near the mills. At the same time, theft began to flourish in the city, which became a big problem for him and the merchants needed an effective deterrent. This and a device like it called "The Maiden" or "Scottish Maiden" may well have inspired the French to borrow the basic idea and give it their own name.

In the spring of 1792, Guillotin, accompanied by Antoine Louis and Charles Sanson, came to Louis at Versailles to discuss the finished draft of the execution mechanism. Despite the threat looming over the monarchy, the king continued to consider himself the head of the nation, and his approval was necessary. The Palace of Versailles was almost empty, noisy, and Louis XVI, usually surrounded by a noisy, lively retinue, looked ridiculously lonely and lost in it. Guillotin was visibly agitated. But the king made only one single melancholy, but striking remark: “Why the semicircular shape of the blade? - he asked. “Does everyone have the same neck?” After that, sitting absently at the table, he personally replaced the semicircular blade in the drawing with an oblique one (later Guillotin made the most important amendment: the blade should fall on the neck of the convict exactly at an angle of 45 degrees). Be that as it may, Louis accepted the invention.

And in April of the same 1792, Guillotin was already fussing on the Place de Greve, where the first device for decapitation was being installed. A huge crowd of onlookers gathered around.

- Look, what a beauty, this Madame Guillotine! - quipped some impudent.

Thus, from one evil tongue to another, the word "guillotine" was firmly established in Paris.

History reference: Later, Guillotin's proposal was revised by Dr. Antoine Louis, who served as a secretary at the Academy of Surgery, and it was according to his drawings that the first guillotine was made in 1792, which was given the name "Louizon" or "Louisette." .

Guillotin and Sanson made sure to test the invention first on animals, and then on corpses - and, I must say, it worked perfectly, like a clock, while requiring minimal human participation.

The Convention finally adopted the “Law on the Death Penalty and the Methods of Executing It”, and from now on, for which Guillotin advocated, the death penalty ignored class differences, becoming one for everyone, namely “Madame Guillotine”.

The total weight of this machine was 579 kg, while the ax weighed more than 39.9 kg. The process of cutting off the head took a total of a hundredth of a second, which was the pride of the doctors - Guillotin and Antoine Louis: they had no doubt that the victims did not suffer. However, the "hereditary" executioner Sanson (in one private conversation) tried to dissuade Dr. Guillotin in his pleasant delusion, arguing that he knows for certain that after cutting off the head, the victim still continues to retain consciousness for several minutes and these terrible minutes are accompanied by an indescribable pain in the severed part of the neck.

- Where did you get this information? Guillotin wondered. This is absolutely contrary to science.

Sanson, deep down, was skeptical about the new science: in the depths of his family, who had seen a lot of things in his lifetime, all sorts of legends were kept - his father, grandfather and brothers more than once had to deal with witches, and with sorcerers, and with warlocks - they were all managed to tell the executioners before the execution. And so he allowed himself to question the humanity of advanced technology. But Guillotin looked at the executioner with regret and not without horror, thinking that, most likely, Sanson was worried that from now on he would be deprived of his job, since anyone could activate Guillotin's mechanism.

Guillotine(fr. guillotine) - a special mechanism for carrying out the death penalty by cutting off the head. An execution using a guillotine is called a guillotine. It is noteworthy that this invention was used by the French right up to 1977! In the same year, for comparison, the Soyuz-24 manned spacecraft went into space.

The guillotine is designed simply, while doing its job very effectively. Its main detail is the "lamb" - a heavy (up to 100 kg) oblique metal blade that freely moves vertically along the guide beams. It was held at a height of 2-3 meters with clamps. When the prisoner was placed on a bench with a special recess that did not allow the convict to pull his head back, the clamps were opened with a lever, after which the blade decapitated the victim at high speed.

Story

Despite its fame, this invention was not invented by the French. The “great-grandmother” of the guillotine is considered to be the “gallows of Halifax” (Halifax Gibbet), which was simply a wooden building with two posts topped with a horizontal beam. The role of the blade was played by a heavy ax blade that slid up and down the grooves of the beam. Such structures were installed in city squares, and the first mention of them dates back to 1066.

The guillotine had many other ancestors. Scottish Maiden (Virgin), Italian Mandaia, they all relied on the same principle. Decapitation was considered one of the most humane executions, and in the hands of a skilled executioner, the victim died quickly and without torment. However, it was the laboriousness of the process (as well as the abundance of convicts who added work to the executioners) that eventually led to the creation of a universal mechanism. What was hard work for a person (not only moral, but also physical), the machine did quickly and without errors.

Creation and popularity

At the beginning of the 18th century, there were a great many ways to execute people in France: the unfortunate were burned, crucified on their hind legs, hung, quartered, and so on. Execution by decapitation (decapitation) was a kind of privilege, and only rich and influential people got it. Gradually, indignation at such cruelty grew among the people. Many followers of the ideas of the Enlightenment sought to humanize the execution process as much as possible. One of them was Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who proposed the introduction of the guillotine in one of the six articles he presented during the debate on the French penal code on October 10, 1789. In addition, he proposed to introduce a system of nationwide standardization of punishment and a system for protecting the offender's family, which should not have been harmed or discredited. On December 1, 1789, these proposals by Guillotin were accepted, but execution by machine was rejected. However, later, when the doctor himself had already abandoned his idea, other politicians warmly supported it, so that in 1791 the guillotine still took its place in the criminal system. Although the requirement of Guillotin to hide the execution from prying eyes did not please those in power, and guillotining became popular entertainment - the convicts were executed in the squares under the whistling and hooting of the crowd.

The first person to be executed on the guillotine was a robber named Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier. Among the people, she quickly received such nicknames as "national razor", "widow" and "Madame Guillotin". It is important to note that the guillotine was in no way associated with any particular layer of society and, in a certain sense, equalized everyone - it was not for nothing that Robespierre himself was executed on it. From the 1870s until the abolition of the death penalty in France, an improved guillotine of the Berger system was used. It is collapsible and is installed directly on the ground, usually in front of the gates of the prison, while the scaffold was no longer used. The execution itself takes a matter of seconds, the headless body was instantly collided by the executioner's henchmen into a prepared deep box with a lid. During the same period, the positions of regional executioners were abolished. The executioner, his assistants and the guillotine were now based in Paris and traveled to places to carry out executions.

End of story

Public executions continued in France until 1939, when Eugène Weidmann became the last "outdoor" victim. Thus, it took almost 150 years for Guillotin's wishes to be hidden from prying eyes to be realized. The last state use of the guillotine in France was on September 10, 1977, when Hamid Djandoubi was executed. The next execution was to take place in 1981, but the alleged victim, Philippe Maurice, received a pardon. The death penalty was abolished in France in the same year.

I would like to note that, contrary to rumors, Dr. Guillotin himself escaped his own invention and safely died a natural death in 1814.

– Olga_Vesna

Over its almost two hundred years of history, the guillotine has decapitated tens of thousands of people, ranging from criminals and revolutionaries to aristocrats, kings and even queens. It's not just a disgustingly efficient killing machine: the Sainte Guillotine served as a symbol of the French Revolution and cast a shameful shadow over the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

We will tell you some amazing facts about this instrument of death, once popularly called the “national razor” of France.

The history of the guillotine goes back to the Middle Ages

The name "guillotine" appears in the 1790s during the French Revolution, but by that time such execution tools had already been used for more than one century. A decapitation device called a "bar" was used in Germany and Flanders in the Middle Ages. The British had a so-called sliding ax, known as the "Halifax gallows", on which heads were chopped off in ancient times. The French guillotine evolved from two pre-existing tools: the "mannaia" from Renaissance Italy and the infamous "Scottish Maiden" that claimed the lives of over 120 people between the 16th and 18th centuries. There are also facts confirming the possibility of using primitive guillotines in France long before the start of the revolution.

In fact, the guillotine was invented as the most humane method of execution.

The invention of the French guillotine dates back to 1789, when Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed to the government a more humane method of execution. Although personally opposed to the death penalty, Guillotin argued that beheading with a lightning-fast machine would be less painful than beheading with a sword or axe. He later oversaw the development of the first prototype, an imposing machine designed by the French doctor Antoine Louis and built by the German inventor of the harpsichord, Tobias Schmidt. The first victim was executed on this machine in April 1792, the weapon quickly became known as the "guillotine", more to the dismay than to the credit of the man believed to be its inventor. Guillotin tried in every possible way to remove his name from this weapon during the guillotine hysteria in the 1790s, and in the early 19th century, his family unsuccessfully tried to petition the government to rename the death machine.

Execution on the guillotine became a mass spectacle for the people

During the reign of terror in the mid-1890s, hundreds of "enemies of the French Revolution" met death under the guillotine's blade. At first, some members of the public complained that the car was too fast, but soon such executions turned into real entertainment. People came in groups to Revolution Square to watch the machine do its terrible job. The guillotine was celebrated in numerous songs, jokes and poems. Spectators could buy souvenirs, read a program that listed the names of the victims, and even have a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant called Cabaret at the Guillotine. Some went to executions every day, especially the "Knitters" - a group of fanatic women who sat in the front rows right in front of the scaffold and knitted on knitting needles between executions. Such a terrible theatrical atmosphere extended to the convicts. Many made sarcastic remarks or bold last words before they died, some even danced their last steps up the scaffold steps. Admiration for the guillotine subsided towards the end of the 18th century, but public executions in France continued until 1939.

Popular toy for children

Children often went to executions and some of them even played at home with their own miniature models of the guillotine. An exact copy of the guillotine, about half a meter high, was a popular toy in France at that time. Such toys were fully functional, and children used them to cut off the heads of dolls or even small rodents. However, they were eventually banned in some cities as having a bad effect on children. Small guillotines also found a place on the dining tables of the upper classes, they were used to cut bread and vegetables.

Guillotine executioners were national celebrities

With the growing popularity of the guillotine, the reputation of the executioners also grew; during the French Revolution, they received great fame. Executioners were evaluated by their ability to quickly and accurately organize a large number of executions. Such work often became a family affair. From 1792 to 1847, the famed Sanson family served as state executioners for generations, bringing a blade to the necks of thousands of victims, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the role of the main executioners went to the Deibler family, father and son. They held this position from 1879 to 1939. People often praised the names of the Sansons and Deiblers on the streets, and the way they dressed on the scaffold dictated the fashion in the country. The underworld also admired executioners. According to some reports, gangsters and other bandits even stuffed tattoos with gloomy slogans like: "My head will go to Deibler."

Scientists conducted terrifying experiments on the heads of convicts

From the very beginning of the use of execution in the form of decapitation, scientists were interested in whether the consciousness of a severed head remains. The debate on the subject reached new heights in 1793, when the executioner's assistant struck the victim's severed head in the face, and onlookers claimed that the face was flushed with anger. Doctors later asked the condemned to try to blink or open one eye after the execution of the sentence to prove that they could still move. Some shouted the name of the executed person or burned their faces with a candle flame or ammonia to see the reaction. In 1880, a doctor named Dessie de Lignère even tried pumping blood into the severed head of a child killer to see if the head could come back to life and talk. The horrific experiments were stopped in the 20th century, but studies on rats still show that brain activity can continue for about four seconds after decapitation.

The guillotine was used for executions in Nazi Germany

The guillotine is mostly associated with the French Revolution, but it claimed just as many lives in Germany during the Third Reich. Adolf Hitler made the guillotine the state method of execution in the 1930s and ordered 20 machines to be installed in German cities. According to Nazi records, some 16,500 people were executed by guillotine, many of them resistance fighters and political dissidents.

The last time the guillotine was used was in the 1970s.

The guillotine remained the state method of execution in France almost until the end of the 20th century. Convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi became the last person to meet his death under the "national razor" in 1977. However, the 189-year reign of the death machine officially ended only in September 1981, when the death penalty was abolished in France.

And finally:

Do you know that in France at the end of the 18th century, young aristocrats held the so-called "balls of victims" - original dances, which could only be attended by those who had lost one of their family members under the guillotine's blade. The invitees put on a red ribbon around their neck, symbolizing the mark from the blade, and performed a dance during which the head suddenly tilted down, simulating decapitation. Such crazy parties have become popular to the point that some even invent beheaded relatives to get into it.

At the word "guillotine" for many people, a terrible picture of execution immediately looms before their eyes. It is believed that the French invented the instrument of death. Indeed, in France they created the guillotine in the form in which we are accustomed to seeing it, but before that it was also used in other European states. In Ireland and Scotland, this deadly invention was called the Scottish Maiden, in Italy - Mandaia, in Germany - Fallbeil. If earlier this weapon made people tremble from one of its kind, now the guillotine serves for the benefit of mankind. This device is used today for cutting paper and cigars.

What is a guillotine?

In the original sense, the guillotine is a mechanism for cutting off the head, used in a number of European countries to carry out the death penalty. The tool was a huge oblique knife, the weight of which varied between 40-100 kg, moving between vertical guides. It was lifted with a rope to a height of about 3 m and secured with a latch. The sentenced to death was laid on a bench, and the head was fixed between boards with a notch for the neck. The lower one was fixed, and the upper one moved up and down in the grooves. The latch holding the knife was opened with a special lever and it fell at great speed right on the victim's neck, due to which death occurred instantly.

Inventor of the instrument of execution

For a long time in France, criminals were burned at the stake, quartered or hanged, only privileged persons were executed by beheading with an ax or a sword in order to reduce their suffering. Dr. Guillotin, who was a member of the National Assembly, in 1791 for the first time proposed to carry out the execution by the same method, without dividing the people into ordinary and aristocrats. In his opinion, the guillotine is an excellent way to save a sentenced person from physical and moral pain, because the weapon was quickly activated and killed in a matter of seconds.

The corresponding proposal was made by J. Guillotin in 1789. This was followed by much controversy, but in the end most of the members agreed with the doctor, and in 1791 this method of execution was officially introduced into the penal code. At first, the murder weapon was tested on corpses, but already in the spring of 1792, the first execution took place on the Greve Square using this mechanism. For a long time there was an opinion that the inventor of the guillotine himself suffered from his own creation, but this is not true. Guillotin died a natural death in 1814.

Use of the guillotine in Europe

A lot of famous personalities were beheaded by the guillotine. This instrument of death was common in many European countries, but the French suffered the most from it. During the French Revolution, many criminals were guillotined; this mechanism was used as the main instrument of execution until 1981. In Germany, the guillotine was considered the main type until 1949. The German mechanism was slightly different from the French, had a winch for lifting the knife, vertical metal racks and was much lower. The weapon was actively used in Nazi Germany for the beheading of criminals.

The history of the guillotine has left its mark in Italy. In 1819, this mechanism was recognized as the main instrument of execution. The criminals were beheaded near the Castel Sant'Angelo in Piazza del Popolo. The Roman guillotine had its own design features: an angular "vice" for squeezing the body of the convict and a straight knife. It was last used in the summer of 1870, after which it was cancelled. Cayenne from the 18th to the 20th century was a place of hard labor and exile for political prisoners. In this tropical place, severe fevers were very common, and it was almost impossible to survive here. Sinnamari Prison was called the "dry guillotine" in the city.

Guillotine manual

The terrible times when people were beheaded for the slightest offense are long gone, now the invention of Dr. Guillotin serves for the benefit of mankind. Metal cutting machines have greatly simplified the work of specialists. The principle of material cutting is based on the principle of operation of the very first mechanism. A fixed lower knife was added to the guillotine, so it also looked like scissors. Depending on the intensity of use, the size and thickness of the material, different types of guillotines are used. The simplest of them is the manual version.

Such a machine works thanks to the Manual guillotine, although it is the simplest equipment that does not require any tricky manipulations, it is very popular in production. With the help of it, plastic, thick cardboard, rubber, plexiglass are cut. The machine is good because it does not require additional communications for its operation, it does not require electricity, it works in any room, and this reduces the cost of work many times over.

Mechanical guillotine

Mechanical machines have proven themselves on the good side. In practice, the reliability of equipment was tested, which not only correctly and accurately performs the tasks, but also consumes little electricity. A cardan shaft is installed in the mechanism, which drives the knife. It receives torque through it. The flywheel itself is rotated by an electric motor.

Hydraulic guillotine

Such equipment is mainly used in medium and large enterprises, since it is large, expensive and necessary for the conveyor production of material. The hydraulic guillotine can easily handle metal of different thicknesses. The high-precision ruler and massiveness of the hydraulic machine guarantees absolute cutting accuracy. The metal sheet along the entire length of the cut is fixed by pressure hydraulic cylinders, but the gap between the knives has to be adjusted mechanically.

Guillotine for metal

Guillotine machines are mainly used for metal roll processing, cutting into strips, cutting sheets in the transverse and longitudinal direction. Handheld equipment easily handles non-ferrous metals (zinc, aluminium, copper and alloys) as well as thin sheets of steel. The cutting of thicker material is carried out by hydraulic, mechanical, pneumatic, electromechanical machines.

The guillotine allows you to get smooth cut edges, without burrs and other deformations. When cutting the sheet, waste is minimized even in cases where the parts have a complex shape. On such a machine, even painted metal can be chopped, the coating does not chip or deform. Some equipment can cut square, corner, round metal. Guillotine machines can also cut large stacks of material.

Paper guillotine

When creating paper-cutting equipment, Dr. Guillotin's terrible invention was also used. Depending on the purpose for which it is used and on what scale, mechanical, electrical, manual and hydraulic types of structures are distinguished. The paper guillotine is mainly used on an industrial scale. It is excellent for perfect cutting of large paper stacks up to 800 sheets.

The knife of the mechanism cuts the fibers, and does not push through them, this is possible due to the oblique movement. The guillotine cuts a large block of paper leaving a perfectly even cut, and this is its greatest advantage. To improve the performance of the equipment, a ruler, automatic clamping and illumination of the cut line are installed on it. In addition, if necessary, any machine can sharpen a knife.

Guillotine for cigars

The name of the ferocious execution tool, most likely, in an ironic sense of the word, is used to refer to a device for cutting off the tip of a cigar. For a long time, knives or scissors were used for this, but they did not give the effect that the guillotine gives. Cigars have a closed end, this is done to preserve the original flavor of tobacco. The historical appearance of the guillotine is more reminiscent of desktop options, although there are also pocket (portable) devices. They are ideal for use in the break room or at home.

It is quite difficult to smoke cigars, the guillotine makes a smooth cut, which is why the smoker gets more pleasure from the process, because he does not convulsive, but smooth inhalation and exhalation. Portable guillotines are single and double sided. The knives are sharp, so the deformation of the tobacco leaf is excluded. For ordinary users, it is best to use double-sided guillotines, single-sided ones are suitable for craftsmen.

The guillotine is a tool for beheading the condemned. It consisted of two pillars connected by a crossbar, between which a sharp blade weighing several tens of kilograms slid along the folds. Who invented this cute "medical device"? Which of the great people lost his life with his help? And how did it improve until the 20th century?

This knife was called "lamb"

Guillotine (fr. Guillotine) - in the original sense - a mechanism for carrying out executions by cutting off the head. An execution using a guillotine is called a guillotine. The main part of the guillotine for cutting off the head is a heavy (40-100 kg) oblique knife (the slang name is "lamb"), freely moving along vertical guides. The knife was raised to a height of 2-3 meters with a rope, where it was held by a latch. The convict was placed on a horizontal bench and the neck was fixed with two boards with a notch, the lower of which was fixed, and the upper one moved vertically in the grooves. After that, the latch holding the knife was opened by a lever mechanism, and it fell at high speed onto the victim's neck.

The use of the guillotine was proposed in 1791 by the physician and member of the National Assembly, Georges Guillotin. This machine was not the invention of either Dr. Guillotin or his teacher, Dr. Louis; it is known that a similar tool was used before in Scotland and Ireland, where it was called the Scottish maiden. The guillotine in France was also called the Virgin and even the Furniture of Justice. The Italian instrument of death described by Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo was called the mandaia. Although similar devices have been tried before in Great Britain, Italy and Switzerland, it was the device created in France, with a slanting knife, that became the standard tool for the death penalty.

Humane way of execution

At that time, cruel methods of execution were used: burning at the stake, hanging, quartering. Only aristocrats and wealthy people were executed in a more "honorable" way - by cutting off their heads with a sword or an ax. It was believed that the guillotine was a much more humane method of execution than those common at that time (other types of execution, which involved the quick death of the convict, often caused prolonged agony with insufficient qualification of the executioner; the guillotine provides instant death even with the minimum qualification of the executioner). In addition, the guillotine was applied to all segments of the population without exception, which emphasized the equality of citizens before the law.

Experiments on corpses went well

Doctor Guillotin was born in 1738. Being elected to the Constituent Assembly, in December 1789 he submitted to the meeting a proposal that the death penalty should always be carried out in the same way - namely through decapitation, and moreover by means of a machine. The purpose of this proposal was to ensure that execution by decapitation would no longer be the privilege of nobles, and that the execution process itself should be carried out as quickly as possible and cause as little suffering as possible. After lengthy debate, Guillotin's idea of ​​capital punishment by decapitation was accepted, and this method of execution was introduced into the penal code drawn up by the Assembly (and became law in 1791).

Initially, however, it was supposed to be beheaded with a sword, but when this method turned out to be inconvenient, the question of the method of carrying out the execution was transferred to a special commission, on behalf of which Dr. Antoine Louis compiled a memorandum where he spoke in favor of a machine similar to the one that Guillotin had already proposed. This proposal was accepted. On April 25, 1792, after successful experiments on corpses, in Paris, on the Place Greve, the first execution was carried out by a new machine. During the production of experiments, this machine was given (by the name of Dr. Louis) the names "louisette" (fr. Louisette) or "little louizon" (fr. la petite Louison), which were used for some time along with the name "guillotine", but were soon supplanted last.

The close connection of the guillotine with the era of terror served as an obstacle to its spread in Europe. However, in 1853 the Guillotine was introduced in Saxony (under the name Fallschwert or Fallbeil) and then spread to some other German states.

The oft-repeated story that Guillotin himself was executed by a machine he invented has no foundation: Guillotin survived the revolution and died of natural causes in 1814.

The guillotine was used extensively during the French Revolution and remained the main method of capital punishment in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981.

The last look of a severed head

So, decapitation by guillotine was a common mechanized form of execution, invented shortly before the French Revolution. The purpose of the invention was to create a painless and quick method of execution. After the head was cut off, the executioner raised it and showed it to the crowd. It was believed that a severed head could see for about ten seconds. Thus, the head of a person was raised so that at the last moment before death he could see the crowd laughing at him.

On April 25, 1792, at the Place Greve, the guillotine was used for the first time as an instrument of execution: an ordinary thief, Nicolas Pelletier, was executed. The executioner was Charles Henri Sanson. The crowd of onlookers, accustomed since the Middle Ages to "exquisite" executions, was disappointed with the speed of execution on the guillotine.

Soon the guillotine moved from the Place de Greve to the Place de la Révolution (now the Place de la Concorde, where most of the executions of the Revolution took place), and already on January 21, 1793, Louis XVI was executed by it. The guillotine was not canceled by the subsequent formation due to its extreme convenience. The execution was carried out for a long time only in public: the verdict on the convict said that he would be beheaded in a public place in the name of the French people. Medieval rituals were also observed: for example, on the last morning, the convict was announced: “Be of good cheer (followed by the surname)! The hour of redemption has come,” after which they asked if he would like a cigarette, a glass of rum.

Berger system guillotine

In Victor Hugo's story "The Last Day of the Condemned to Death" there is a diary of a prisoner who, according to the law, is to be guillotined. In the preface to the story, added to the next edition, Hugo is a fierce opponent of the death penalty through the guillotine and calls for its replacement with life imprisonment. Hanging, quartering, burning disappeared - the turn came and the guillotine, Hugo believed.

From the 1870s until the abolition of the death penalty in France, an improved guillotine of the Berger system was used. It is collapsible for transportation to the place of execution and is installed directly on the ground, usually in front of the gates of the prison, the scaffold is no longer used. The execution itself takes a matter of seconds, the headless body was instantly collided by the executioner's henchmen into a prepared deep box with a lid. During the same period, the positions of regional executioners were abolished. The executioner, his assistants and the guillotine are now based in Paris and go to places to carry out executions.

In Paris, from 1851 to 1899, the condemned were kept in the La Roquette prison, in front of the gates of which the executions took place. In the following period, the square in front of the Sante prison became the place of executions. In 1932, Pavel Gorgulov, a Russian émigré, author of works signed by Pavel Bred, was executed in front of the Sante prison for the murder of the President of the Republic, Paul Doumer. Seven years later, on June 17, 1939, at 4:50 in Versailles, in front of the Saint-Pierre prison, the head of the German Eugen Weidmann, the murderer of seven people, was beheaded. This was the last public execution in France: because of the obscene excitement of the crowd and scandals with the press, it was ordered that executions be carried out behind closed doors on the territory of the prison.

The last execution by cutting off the head with a guillotine was carried out in Marseille, during the reign of Giscard d "Estaing, on September 10, 1977. The name of the executed Arab was Hamid Dzhandubi. This was the last death penalty in Western Europe.

Famous French guillotined personalities

— Louis XVI

— Marie Antoinette

— Antoine Barnave

— Jean Sylvain Bailly

— Georges Jacques Danton

— Antoine Lavoisier

— Maximilian Robespierre

— Georges Couton

— Louis Antoine Saint-Just

— Mathieu Jourdan

— Jean-Louis Verger

— Camille Desmoulins

Guillotine in Germany and East Germany

In Germany, the guillotine (German: Fallbeil) was used from the 17th-18th centuries and was the standard type of death penalty until its abolition in 1949. In parallel, decapitation with an ax was also practiced in some German states, which was finally abolished only in 1936. Unlike the French samples of the 19th and 20th centuries, the German guillotine was much lower and had metal vertical posts and a winch to lift the knife.

In Nazi Germany, guillotining was applied to criminals. An estimated 40,000 people were beheaded in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. This number includes resistance fighters in Germany itself and the countries it occupies. Since the resistance fighters did not belong to the regular army, they were considered common criminals and, in many cases, were taken to Germany and guillotined. Decapitation was considered an "ignoble" form of death, as opposed to execution.

Until 1966, beheading was used in the GDR; then it was replaced by execution, since the only guillotine was out of order.

Famous guillotined personalities - Germans, Russians, Poles, Tatars

- Lubbe, Marinus van der - guillotined for setting fire to the Reichstag in January 1934.

- Jalil, Musa Mustafovich and his associates were guillotined for participation in an underground organization on August 25, 1944 in the Plötzensee military prison in Berlin.

- Klyachkovsky, Stanislav was guillotined on charges of attempting to assassinate the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, in the Plötzensee prison on May 10, 1940.

But the words came through again

In Rome, which was part of the Papal States, the guillotine became a recognized instrument of execution in 1819. Executions took place in Piazza del Popolo and at the Castel Sant'Angelo. Unlike the samples, the Roman guillotine had a straight blade and an angular "vice" that clamped the body of the convict. The last execution by guillotine took place on July 9, 1870, then, during the unification of Italy, the guillotine was abolished along with the "papal" right. Most of the guillotine executions were carried out by the long-lived Roman executioner Bugatti, who retired in 1865.

In Rome there is a monument to the Carbonari Angelo Targhini and Leonid Montanari, who were guillotined on November 23, 1825 in Piazza del Popolo. The original inscription on the monument directly accused the Vatican: "by order of the pope, without evidence and without judicial protection" (Italian: Ordinata dal Papa, senza prove i senza difesa). In 1909, the government, "by agreement with the Vatican," smeared over the accusatory words with plaster, but soon, during the repair of the building, they came out again.