Executions in the late eighteenth century were not a pretty sight. If you were a noble convicted of a crime, you got you head lopped off by an axe, which usually took several good whacks. If you were a commoner, you got the breaking wheel, which was basically just getting strapped to a wagon wheel and bludgeoned to death by some creep who probably took far too much enjoyment in the creativity allowed to them by their chosen profession.
Such was the case in 1789, when the people of France revolted, hanged a shit ton of nobles, and forced King Louis XVI to form a democratically elected National Assembly to help him rule. It was a heady time for lovers of freedom in France, who set themselves to making reforms to better the lives of those not lucky enough to be born into the nobility. One of these men was Dr. Joseph Guillotin, a well to do doctor who staunchly opposed the death penalty. However, when the good doctor proposed to the Assembly that the death penalty be abolished because it was excessively cruel, his fellow delegates only heard the parts about it being cruel. Not wanting to be cruel, or at least not as cruel as the nobility, they decided it would be best to design a better way to execute people.
Enter into the picture Antoine Louis, a doctor with notably less scruples than Guillotin, who agreed to design this better way with the help of some creepy German guy named Tobias Schmidt. How do we know he was creepy? Well, when it was asked if anyone wanted to help design a new execution device, he was the first to raise his hand. Anyways, Dr. Louis had some experience with an English device called a gibbet, which dropped a heavy axe on the neck of a strapped down victim. However, this mostly resulted in the neck getting crushed rather than cut. To improve upon the device, the pair decided to replace the axe with a super sharp blade. At first the blade was straight, until King Louis XVI, apparently not having much to do since the National Assembly took over running the country, suggested using an angled blade in order to allow for various neck sizes. In what must have been a pretty sick burn for the time, Dr. Louis named his new killing machine the guillotine to honor Dr. Guillotin, who you might remember hated the death penalty.
The first execution by guillotine took place in 1792, luckily right before the Reign of Terror began in France. With more radical elements taking control in the Assembly, it was decided that France didn't really need a noble class at all, resulting in thousands being rounded up to have their heads lopped off, most notably King Louis XVI and his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette. Reportedly the guillotine had no problem dealing with their differently sized necks. The French people thought the whole spectacle of the guillotine was just great fun, and huge crowds would show up to every execution, cheering and jostling for the chance to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood of the accused, followed by parading the severed heads about town. The idea of the guillotine was so popular that people began buying small ones to cut vegetables and toy ones for the kids. Unfortunately, as happens, things began to get out of control once they ran out of nobles. Various political groups began jockeying for power, which of course involved a lot of guillotining of those not deemed radical enough, and then of those deemed too radical. In total, around 16,000 people were guillotined over the course of a year.
As a result of all this mayhem, France fell under the control of a dictator named Napoleon Bonaparte, you might have heard of him, who allowed the surviving nobility to return and reclaim their place in French society. These re-established nobles, strangely proud of their executed relatives, took to wearing red scarves, cutting their hair short in the back, and doing dances full of jerking motions similar to those made by a body right after a head gets lopped off. It was probably the most brazen and ridiculous declaration of “fuck you” in human history. Instead of being disgusted by such behavior, other people began to copy it, though in a much more flamboyant manner to make sure everyone who saw them knew they were only doing it ironically. This is pretty much how hipsters got their start. Anyways, though France had six other types of government following the fall of Napoleon, the guillotine remained the primary method of execution for all of them. The last public execution in France by guillotine was in 1939, after which they did it privately with only a few lucky people getting to watch. The last execution by guillotine was in 1977, after which it was finally outlawed in 1981.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ex%C3%A9cution_de_Marie_Antoinette_le_16_octobre_1793.jpg