Science Fiction written in the "Victorian Era" (circa 1837 to 1901, the reign of Queen Victoria) would by today's standards mostly be considered steampunk.
Steampunk as a genre is an attempt to go back to the era when steam engines powered trains and ships. Flight, such as was happening, was all done by hot air, hydrogen or helium. Powered road vehicles that didn't run on rails were in their earliest days and steam power was a major player, with gasoline, diesel and (very late Victorian era) electricity being the other three contenders. Steam's advantage had a lot to do with the primitive state of crude oil refining and formulating of gasoline.
Electricity was the new kid on the block and mostly used for lighting (from late 1870's).
Electric cooking and space heating was a rare curiosity until the early 1900's due to a lack of available high power electricity distribution. Electric motors of practical form came along in the late 1830's, with the first electric vehicle being a boat that transported 14 people in 1838. Motors for stationary use had the same problem as using electricity for cooking. Attempts were made to use large battery banks but a battery powered lathe or drill press just didn't cut it - not for very long at a time.
So for contemporary Victorian SciFi or latter-day steampunk, things like electric stoves and motors are the "high tech" of the day. Authors like Jules Verne saw the potential applications of electricity, once a sufficient and steady supply of it would become available.
50's era SciFi could be called Atompunk due to the ubiquity of "atom powered" and radioactive based technology. Read the original Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov for a taste of that. Atomic this and Atomo that. Every little bloody thing is "atomic powered", including a fancy dress with 3D lighting effects. 'Tis a pity Asimov completely abandoned that in the much later continuation books.
How about Jetpunk for the 1960's? As the jet engine obsoleted the piston engine in commercial aircraft, jet engines sprouted up everywhere in fiction.
The 1970's? Google formicapunk
I've read a lot of SciFi from that decade. A lot of it was "experimental" or "new wave" - lots of it total crap or a real headscratcher as to how it even qualifies under the loosest definition of SciFi let alone Science Fiction - or "Why the bleep did Analog publish this?".
The 1980's and later? Far as I'm concerned, that's when Science Fiction and SciFi finally matured. Everything was fair game and the field could no longer be pigeonholed, it consistently failed to be mainly represented by the big new major technology of the time. Electronic computer technology had been in SF since at least the late 1950's, with written and visual SF envisioning things like computers as small as desks (desk computers, not *desktop* computers, The Jagged Orbit, 1969) and some especially forward visionaries postulating handhelds like Star Trek, Rendezvous with RAMA and The Mote in God's Eye.
The 1980's brought in real world refinements with many of the previous fantasy devices becoming real. That made it much harder for authors to come up with "far out" technologies to put in their stories. Real desk sized computers like the Xerox Alto and STAR never made much of a mark, being rapidly surpassed by microtechnology leading to the microcomputers that could sit *on* desks.
Throughout the history of science fiction the *best* stories haven't been so dependent on the technology being a main cast member, but tech is always there lurking in the background at least as part of the scenery.
The genre has come a long way from the time when an author would have to provide an extensive description of something like an electric motor for readers who might not have ever even seen an electric lamp, let alone know what electricity is.