Long before electricity -
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." - Archimedes
The lever and fulcrum were discovered by standing in forest fires getting third degree burns while watching flaming trees drop and flip burning logs at the discoverer.
Then there was that whole inclined plane thing that made the pyramids possible. (Inclined planes were discovered watching wheels roll uphill.)
The Archimedean screw was discovered by drunken ancient Egyptians who couldn't follow a straight line and accidentally wrapped Dad's inclined plane around a pole. Trying to hide the evidence, they tried to twist it in to the remains of a hollow log from a forest fire left with one end standing in the Nile except instead of it going down, water came up and created an unprecedented amount of water in a field during the dry season. Dad declared that they discovered irrigation and that led to a crop surplus.
Watching crocodiles float half-submerged on the Nile led to the discovery of boating.
Again, alcohol was involved when several of them raced out on to Mediterranean in Dad's boat to see what that baby could do running flat out.
It sank, so they discovered that repeating excuses work when they got away with telling Dad that they were just trying to dump the excess grain.
That led to the discovery of bigger boats which then led to the discovery of Southern Europe.
Europeans discovered that with more food being imported that they didn't have to die out and become historically insignificant after all.
From there, large scale international crop trading was discovered and later, double entry bookkeeping in Southern Europe (some place called Italy or Venice or something) and that led to the discovery of international banking.
International banking led to the discovery of bank robbery and bank robbery led to the discovery of affiliated kingdoms, which led to the discovery of the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire led to the discovery of history, history led to the discovery of time, and enough time passing led to the discovery of spaghetti in China.
The discovery of spaghetti in China led to the discovery that Gallileo liked keeping an eye out for dinner, so he discovered the telescope and rediscovered the excuse, so he told the bankers that it was to watch ships coming in so you could see if they were low or high in the water and fix stock prices in what was later discovered to be insider trading.
Falling over backward after way too much wine, telescope in hand, led Galileo to discover the sky. Further alcohol led to the discovery of moons around Jupiter.
That led to the discovery of imagining how cool it would be to live on Jupiter and watch a bitchload of moons rising and setting - and that's naturally led to the discovery of space travel.
That's how the new rocket motor got started.
All before electricity.
Unless we add in the fact that Egyptians had already discovered the battery but lost it because they forgot to discover the name for electricity.
Did you read the part where electrons are involved in the new motor?
The danged thing practically built itself.
We just had to wait and discover when it was ready to do that.
