> The story of Topsy fell into obscurity for the next 70 years but has become more prominent in popular culture, partly because the film of the event still exists. In popular culture, Thompson and Dundy's killing of Topsy has switched attribution, with claims it was an anti-alternating current demonstration organized by Thomas A. Edison during the war of the currents. Edison was never at Luna Park and the electrocution of Topsy took place ten years after the war of currents.
That was a time before electrical engineering as mature field really existed. The situation parallels software today.
It didn't help that Edison was electrocuting animals across the country to frighten people about AC in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_(elephant)
The mysterious workings of electrical gadgets were also the inspiration for Rube Goldberg's cartoons.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-behind-rube-gol...
That was the electrical zeitgest a little over a century ago.