Misattribution of the guillotine's invention to Guillotin

Although Guillotin did not invent the guillotine and opposed the death penalty, his name became an eponym for the device. The actual inventor of the prototype was the French physician Antoine Louis. The device was later named after Guillotin, who had proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a special device to carry out executions in France in a more humane manner. Its design was intended to make capital punishment more reliable and less painful in accordance with new Enlightenment ideas of human rights.