WI: Electric motors predated steam engines?

Steam technology was simpler. Simple enough that it was possible to implement by (the most advanced) preindustrial society. It may be that industrial-grade applications for electricity, such as transport, require the much greater degree of wealth and sophistication that steam made possible.

I disagree that steam power is simpler. Watt needed precision lathing from Wilkinson, the famed man of iron, before he could produce a steam engine worth anything more than a water pump. No precision tooling, no steam engines (Newcomen gets an honorable mention).

Meanwhile, a dynamo is incredibly simple once you know what you’re doing. Or, to put it this way: if you (actually you in AD 2018, not a hypothetical you in the 18th century) had to build one of the two from scratch, what would be easier?
 
For me, the steam engine 100%. I'm an anti-talent at this sort of thing but given enough resources, I can actually conceive of building a (very unsafe and low quality) steam engine. For a dynamo, not only do I have no idea, but I'd have to trawl the Internet just to know what to read before I start planning. This, with my 2018 self, stuck firmly in the Age of Information. A hypothetical 18th century me? Might as well tell him to build the freaking Space Shuttle...

That "once you know what you're doing" you had to add is the devil in the details.
 
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