What if Edison invents the Radio/Wireless Telegraph ?

Simple question how would you the world change if Edison invented (and in this case not stolen from others) the basics of radio technology?

Here is background for the actual Point of Divergence

I. Edison’s Etheric Force (OTL)
II. Mahlon Loomis - First Wireless Telegrapher (OTL)
III. Edison's Vacuum Tube (OTL)

IV. Edison's and Loomis' Eureka Moment (ATL/POD)

So lets assume that Mahlon Loomis reads about Edison's experiments with a wireless telegraph and contacts him. At the time Loomis still has some name recognition. Obviously Edison's etheric force looks different from Loomis discovery however Edison seemed to have cared more for results than scientific theory. Lets say the two collaborate and although lacking a bit in the theoretical deparment build a rather reliable, simple spark gap transmitter telegraph just by constructing sufficiently powerful equipment to brute force a radio signal into the air. Once the first telegraph chains are build it becomes obvious that it would be nice to find better detector and a mean to amplify signals than a galvanometer and a ever bigger spark transmitter. So once he Edison encounters the Edison effect, the two have their Eureka moment.....

Now everything is in place to build some decent radio. Also as a nice side effect Edison actually did invent something himself in this potential timeline instead of only gobbling up other people's resarch. How does history change?
 
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I. Edison’s Etheric Force (OTL)

In 1875 Edison came very close to inventing the electromagnetic wireless. He noticed that a spark in the telegraphic circuit containing inductance created sparks between two distant conducting objects without any galvanic connection to the circuit except the ground. Observing these sparks, he could actually send messages without wires! When studying the received sparks he was puzzled because they could not be detected by a galvanometer, had no polarity and gave no chemical reactions like sparks from a Volata pile. Eidson’s conclusion was that this was due to a new physical force : “a radiant force, somewhere between light and heat on the one hand and magnetism and electricity on the other; in short, something new to to science.”

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He started to call it the “etheric force”. For its detection, he constructed a spark gap detector “the etherscope” a dark box with two pointed conductors whose separation could be changed. Progress could be read from the weekly pages of Scientific American at the end of 1875 and in early spring 1876. The research ended when Edwin James Houston and Elihu Thomson proved the same year that the sparks were actually oscillatory high-frequency electric currents, which could not be detected by DC equipment. Consequently Edison dropped this phenomenon in favor of other more profitable research.

Source
History of Wireless
von T. K. Sarkar,Robert Mailloux,Arthur A. Oliner,M. Salazar-Palma, Dipak L. Sengupta
 
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II. Mahlon Loomis - First Wireless Telegrapher (OTL)

Not a lot of details are available about Mahlon Loomis’ early life. This is unfortunate because it is often interesting to see how a young inventive mind grows. We do, however, know that he was surrounded by educated minds, as his father was a founder of the AMERICAN EPHEMERIS and NATIONAL ALMANAC. In addition to this, his older brother George, was an inventor and holder of several patents himself.

The Start Of The Electrical Days

About 1860, Mahlon Loomis became interested in electricity, and his first application of this was an experiment in the forced increase of growth in plants. This was achieved by buried metal plates connected to an electrical current furnished by batteries.In this same time period Mahlon became interested in using the electrical charges obtainable from the upper atmosphere by means of kites carrying metal wires. At first he planned to use this natural source of electricity to replace batteries on a telegraph circuit. It is noted in many references that this was something that was actually achieved on a telegraph line that was 400 miles long.

Later on, from experiments in this area, Mahlon discovered that a kite sent aloft would affect the flow of current in another kite that was some distance away from the first kite.This set him on a path of developing it as a system of wireless telegraphy for practical long distance communications.

It Actually Works!

The year is 1868, and Mahlon Loomis demonstrates to a group of Congressmen and eminent scientists a wireless "communication" system between two sites 14 to 18 miles apart. There seems to be some discrepancy as to the distance in the various records that exist, however in the picture that was drawn by Mahlon Loomis, 14 miles is mentioned. This and many other pictures and notes are on file in the Library of Congress. From one mountain peak he sent up a kite, the bottom of which was covered with thin copper gauze, and the kite string was copper wire. He connected this apparatus up to a galvometer that had the other end of the circuit connected to ground. Immediately the galvometer showed the passage of current!

He then set up an identical outfit on a mountain peak 18 miles away, to send. He would touch this second kites wire to ground and by this action reduced the voltage of the charged stratum and lowered the deflection in the galvometer attached to the other kite at first location we discussed.
There were problems with the communications system sometimes. It seemed that if one of the kites was at the wrong height, the system would not work. This led Loomis to believe that there were different areas in the atmosphere, and depending which area you were in, would control if the communication would work or not. There were even days when the system just would not work at all. In thinking about that, I suppose it could be due to the electrostatic charge in the atmosphere that existed at that time during the experiment.

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Drawing done by Mahlon Loomis, showing 14 miles between mountains.
From Library of Congress Archives.


Mahlon Seeks the Government’s Help

Senator Charles Sumner, encouraged by a previous government grant to Samuel F.B. Morse, introduced a bill into the Senate on January 13, 1869. The "Loomis Aerial Telegraph Bill" asked for an act of incorporation for the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company, and for the appropriation of $50,000 to help perfect Loomis’s discovery and make it practical. Loomis had proposed a system where wireless telegraph messages could be sent across the Atlantic at 1/16 the cost of what it was using a Trans-Atlantic cable. In an address to Congress, Loomis explained his system worked by: "Causing electrical vibrations or waves to pass around the world, as upon the surface of some quiet lake one wave circlet follows another from the point of the disturbance to the remotest shores, so that from any other mountain top upon the globe another conductor, which shall pierce this plane and receive the impressed vibration, may be connected to an indicator which will mark the length and duration of the vibration; and indicate by any agreed system of notation, convertible into human language, the message of the operator at the point of the first disturbance."

The bill, although gaining the support of a few Congressmen, was thought to be a fraud by many others. It was shuttled from committee to committee with much delay. On May 20 thru 21, 1872, a lengthy discussion took place in the House. The issue of appropriations had been removed from the bill, and issue of incorporation was all that remained of the Loomis bill.
The newspapers became extremely active on the Loomis issue, unfortunately the majority of them were not favorable to the concept of wireless communication. Their reports ranged from polite skepticism to outright ridicule and allegations of the Loomis method being a fraud!

A copy of the Loomis Bill was also submitted to the committee for patents. On July 30, 1872, Patent number 129,971 was issued to Mahlon Loomis. On January 6, 1873, the Loomis Bill was brought to a vote in the Senate and passed by a vote of 29 to 12, with 33 Senators absent. The record shows that neither of Virginia's Senators voted for the bill, despite the fact that Loomis was a resident there. Five days later the bill was signed into law by President Grant, thus incorporating the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company. What had been achieved by this? Actually, not very much! Although Loomis now had a legal corporation, it was not allowed to operate outside Washington D.C. with out the prior consent of the state the corporation wished to operate within.

The Twilight Years and Fade to Obscurity

During the later years of his life, Mahlon worked as a dentist only to the extent to get some more capital to use to purchase goods for his electrical and communications experiments. In the late 1870’s a distance was obtained of 20 miles. In this experiment he erected steel masts on top of wooden towers (these replaced the kites of the earlier experiments) and reportably maintained fairly reliable communications for periods of months at a time.

Mahlon Loomis was heard to say many time the following statement:

"I know that I am regarded as a crank, perhaps a fool by some, and as to the latter, possibly I am, for I could have discarded this thing entirely and turned my attention to making money (...)I have not only discovered a new world, but the means to invade it. My compensation is poverty, contempt, neglect, forgetfulness. In the distant future, when the possibilities of this discovery are more fully developed, public attention will be directed to it’s originator, and the congressional records will furnish the indisputable proof that the credit belongs to me."

On October 13,1886, after a weeks long illness, Mahlon Loomis died at his brother’s country home in Terra Alta, West Virginia ; he was 60 years old. During the illness, his brother George reported that Mahlon was in hopes that the world would realize and use his invention. His actions did not catch the attention of the world as those experiments and successes that Marconi had. It almost seems that he was just a generation ahead of his time. The wireless system that was to happen had to wait another generation until there would be a bit more knowledge to draw upon to bring it to it’s fulfillment and usefulness.

Source
Mahlon Loomis - First Wireless Telegrapher
by Edward A. Sharpe, Archivist SMEC 1989 ( now SMECC 2003)
 
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III. Edison's Vacuum Tube (OTL)

In early 1880,Thomas Edison and his team were hard at work trying to find a light bulb filament that worked well. He had already settled on a carbonized (burned) bamboo filament, but even this solution was not perfect. After glowing for a few hours, carbon from the filament would be deposited on the inside walls of the bulb, turning it black. This would not do.
Edison tried to understand what was happening. His assistant noticed that the carbon seemed to be coming from the end of the filament that was attached to the power supply, and seemed to be flying through the vacuum onto the walls of the bulb.

Edison determined that not only was carbon flying through the vacuum, but that it carried a charge. That is, electricity was flowing not only through the filament but also through the evacuated bulb. In order to measure this flow, he made a special bulb with a third electrode, to which he could attach an instrument to measure the current. He reasoned that if the current would flow between the two ends of the filament, it would also flow to this third electrode. While he was proven to be right about the flow, Edison could not explain it, and the third electrode did not prevent blackening of the bulb, so he moved on to other experiments. But he did patent the new device, because he believed that it might have some commercial applications, such as measuring electric current.

Source
Engineering and and Technology Wiki - Edison Effect
http://ethw.org/Edison_Effect
 
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