AHC: Practical Electricity Not Discovered

as opposed to impractical electricity?
Yeah.

I think he means, keep electricity something studied by scientists as a curiosity, rather than a main driver of civilization and utility on par with running water and roads.

And I'm not sure how possible it is. The first recognizable electric motors were created as a scientific curiosity back in the mid-18th Century, and continued to be studied in the context of the relationship between electricity, magnetism, and force, culminating in Ampere's and Faraday's Laws.

Generators and literally motors run backwards (from an engineering standpoint, they're quite different since they're optimized for very different thing, but as far as physics is concerned they're more or less exactly the same). Once you have generators and motors and resistive heating, including light generation (this is something that's going to be stumbled onto not matter what), there's no way that people won't recognize their usefulness and continue to refine them over the years. Even AC, hailed in its time as a genius revolution, is fairly inevitable as its a natural consequence of the simplest generator designs.
 
Science and technology and aren't something linear, neither dormant, you can't "prevent" something from being discovered or invent, it may take some delay or show up in some form see the whole Newton and Liebnitz ordeal, but you can't stop science from growing without some apocalyptic event happening. Just for you example, studies of electromagnetism date back to Antiquity, men always had fascination for lightning, such a powerful and unyielding force of nature, the greeks already had some studies based on Amber and magnets (which named after Magnesia, the place of Iron oxides were mined), then it takes of centuries of pauses and advances, you get Maxwell.

So, even if you kill Faraday, someone else will study sooner or later, same for Maxwell and others.
 
Two gotchas...

The ancient 'Baghdad Battery', which was probably used to plate or otherwise 'improve' jewellery. Former is less likely as, IIRC, both the Voltage and Amperage are inadequate. Latter would mimic the Incas' trick of starting with a low-carat, mostly copper alloy, leach in acid spring, rinse, polish, repeat until the surface is pure 24 carat. Literally, turning 'Base Metal' into gold.
If not the legendary 'Philosopher's Stone', then a fair facsimile...

Electrostatics. You can generate enough for fun tricks by rubbing fur on amber or glass, by dripping water, by a dozen variants of rotating devices. But, like the Alexandrian steam-spinner, it is nigh impossible to get useful work from such...

One way to keep electricity off the map is to have the Antikythera Device reach port. IIRC, this wasn't a one-off, there may have been one in each of a dozen Greek cities. But, they seem to have gone to scrap due looting...

Have the Romans take up clockwork enthusiastically ??
 
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