m II wrote:


I wonder how Tesla's work would have been different if his first great
rivalry had been with Marconi rather than Edison.


It was. There were really bad irregularities at the patent office.
Marconi had connections. Roughly forty years alter, thing were turned
around.


The patent process was and still is rife with loopholes that
almost encourage abuse.

A.G. Bell beat Elisha Gray (who ironically founded Western
Electric and ran it during the rise of AT&T) to the patent on the
telephone through a technicality.

Gray actually had a working model first. And had the first filing.

Bell's project borrowed liberally from Gray.

(When I worked at AT&T, it was a cardinal sin to mention Gray's
name. We were all shown "The Alexander Graham Bell Story." A film
with huge historical inaccuracies regarding the invention of the
telephone. A film for which Alexander Graham Bell's daughter, Mrs.
Gilbert Grosvenor, had official script approval. The film was also
funded with huge help from AT&T.)

Vladimir Zworykin had actually visited Philo Farnsworth' lab and
translated whole technologies to his own Sarnoff funded project for
the development of Television. And with the aid of Sarnoff's
lawyers, landed the patent.

As with Tesla, Farnsworth's estate was eventually vindicated by
the courts, and Farnsworth was posthumously named the inventor of
Television.