Although indelibly associated in literature, the cinema, television and the European cultural tradition generally with the French
Revolution, 1789-1793, and with the death penalty in France, the machine that beheads by means of a blade that falls between
two grooved vertical columns is in reality much older. Small primitive versions were used for the execution of nobles as early as
the fourteenth century, especially in Scotland. Science quickly discovered a new and surprising fact (confirmed since by modern
neurophysiology) that a head cut off by a swift slash of axe or guillotine knows that it is a beheaded head while it rolls along the
ground or into the basket – consciousness survives long enough for such a perception.