Ethiopia had, according to some sources, attempted to adopt the electric chair as a method of executing criminals. The emperor Menelik II is said to have acquired three electric chairs in 1896 at the behest of a missionary, but could not make the devices work as his nation did not have a reliable source of electric power available at that time. Two of the chairs were either used as garden furniture or given to friends and Menelik II is said to have used the third electric chair as a throne.