The relevant article about the effectiveness of a historical approach is
"The influence of an historically oriented course on students' content
knowledge in optics evaluated by means of facets-schemes analysis"
Igal Galili and Amnon Hazan
Am. Jour of Physics,Volume 68, Issue S1, July 2000, S3-S15
I remembered that it was not used in a mechanics course, but it is optics
not electricity. The study was done in Israel.