Electricity was that "something" plus or minus on the electrified body. What was that "something"?
At that time, physicists affirmed that electricity can be conceived as being formed of individual units - electricity atoms.
This was the main answer - A.
There also existed alternative B, from the electric and magnetic field, with lines of attraction or repulsion forces, induction, waves, ether - Faraday, Maxwell and Hertz.
However, in 1894, Johnstone Stoney coins the term electron.
Then JJ Thomson in 1897, deduced that the cathodic rays were rather negatively charged particles than waves, which he named "corpuscles" (electrons).
Subjectively or objectively, the electron is accepted. Electron = "electricity atom".
And it triumphs in the planetary atomic model. A micro-cosmos!
The "atom's catastrophe" followed. So, the electron's catastrophe! Negative polarity isolated in the electron, the independence in movement and action, are the true catastrophe! In other words, the electron is unreal!

What effects does the inexistence of the electron have, what does it change? It does not change anything.
Electricity remains electricity (matter field). The "electronic" current has been and is electric current. The quality of phenomena does not change as we interpret it.
The impact is on the theoretical plane, where the objective perception of a phenomenon by different persons leads to different subjective interpretations.
The purpose of interpretation is knowledge. The correct interpretation opens the door for knowledge. The wrong interpretation closes the door to knowledge.
Virtually, electronics is the progress of electricity. Transistors, integrated circuits, microscopes, computers, etc. All are electric devices and apparatuses.
This development began, however, from the making of components by means of practical efforts, experiment, exploration, even by reconsidering the refuse, pursuing only the concrete effect of electricity.
The accomplishments consolidated, however, the illusion that the electron is the electricity atom and the idea that magnetism must also have its own particle (magneton) and that gravity must have its own particle (graviton) and that even mass must have its own particle (the Higgs boson).
I hope the example of the "mutilation" of the polarity of electricity is enough - the one hundred years stagnation.