Comment by defrost

Also good at bad analogies:

  When electricity arrived, nobody woke up and redesigned the plant. Why would they?

The reason shearing sheds and cotton gins remained driven by by overhead shafts turning from a single large motor, be that a hydraulic mill, a steam engine or an electric motor was that many tiny hand held electric motors with the required torque for the task were some time coming.

Once they became an economically feasible alternative, movement away from shaft drives happened at pace.