What was the name of the French inventor who, around 1790, invented a machine designed to provide criminals with a humane method of execution?

During the early, idealistic days of the French Revolution, a physician and politician named Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin argued for a more humane and egalitarian form of capital punishment. In 1789, he proposed to the National Assembly that a single, swift method of execution should replace the brutal and varied punishments of the old regime, where nobles were beheaded by sword and commoners were often hanged or broken on the wheel. He envisioned a painless death for all, delivered by a simple mechanism.

While the resulting machine would forever bear his name, Guillotin was not its inventor. The actual prototype was designed by a surgeon, Dr. Antoine Louis, and built by a German harpsichord maker named Tobias Schmidt. Though similar devices had been used in other parts of Europe, this was the first to be adopted as a nation's standard. The goal was to make execution less of a gruesome public spectacle and more of a clinical, instantaneous process.

Ironically, the device intended as a humane reform became an infamous symbol of the Reign of Terror's mass executions. Dr. Guillotin was horrified by the association and the machine's bloody legacy. He and his family unsuccessfully petitioned the French government to rename the device, and they eventually changed their own surname to distance themselves from the grim invention that had been named in his honor.