What if the Inca in South America successfully developed and used electricity and radio for rudimentary communication by the time the Conquistadors arrived in the 16th century?
For example, a paddle-wheel in a stream, rotating two magnetic lodestones around a crystalline material which is a good conductor and is provided by the local Shaman as a "sacred crystal" which sometimes sparks, is connected to an apparatus in which a golden wire touched close to the crystal and connected to a higher-reaching silver artifact (coincidentally resembling an antenna) causes a spark to strike seemingly instantaneously in a similar object miles away.
Years later, this device is somewhat simplified and copied by other villages, and it becomes possible to send messages through some Incan-analogue of Morse Code between these devices. Touching the golden wire to the conducting surface is eventually simplified to the pushing of a wooden button.
By the time the Spanish arrive, the Inca essentially have wireless telegraphy through their empire.
How would this effect History?
For example, a paddle-wheel in a stream, rotating two magnetic lodestones around a crystalline material which is a good conductor and is provided by the local Shaman as a "sacred crystal" which sometimes sparks, is connected to an apparatus in which a golden wire touched close to the crystal and connected to a higher-reaching silver artifact (coincidentally resembling an antenna) causes a spark to strike seemingly instantaneously in a similar object miles away.
Years later, this device is somewhat simplified and copied by other villages, and it becomes possible to send messages through some Incan-analogue of Morse Code between these devices. Touching the golden wire to the conducting surface is eventually simplified to the pushing of a wooden button.
By the time the Spanish arrive, the Inca essentially have wireless telegraphy through their empire.
How would this effect History?
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