Guillotine

A device that executes people by dropping a heavy blade through a guided frame to decapitate them. It became closely associated with the French Revolution and later served as France’s official method of execution.

斬首: Execution or killing by severing the head from the body. The guillotine is a mechanical instrument for carrying out this form of killing.
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin: A French physician and politician who advocated equal and less painful methods of execution. His name became attached to the device, though he did not invent it.
Louis XVI: King of France from 1774 until the monarchy was abolished during the French Revolution. His execution by guillotine in 1793 made the device a defining image of revolutionary justice.
Capital punishment: The state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for a crime. The guillotine was a state instrument for carrying out death sentences.
Counterweight: A weight used to balance or drive a mechanical system. The raised blade assembly falls under gravity after its restraint is released.
Antoine Louis: A French surgeon who advised on the design of the execution machine adopted in 1792. He helped specify the blade-and-frame design used for the French guillotine.
Marie Antoinette: Queen of France from 1774 until the monarchy was abolished during the French Revolution. Her 1793 execution was among the Revolution’s most publicized uses of the guillotine.
Reform of criminal law: Changes to laws and institutions governing crimes, punishment, and criminal procedure. Advocates presented mechanical execution as a more uniform punishment across social classes.
Release mechanism: A device that disengages a restraint or latch to initiate movement. A latch holds the blade aloft until the executioner triggers its fall.
French Revolution: A period of political upheaval in France beginning in 1789 that ended the monarchy and transformed the state. Revolutionary authorities adopted the guillotine amid efforts to standardize state punishment.

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