How to explain why a human society's state of technology on another planet might be locked?
I've become interested in sci-fi / science-fantasy / weird Westerns.
Building upon what I asked here I would like to be more specific and ask if there's scientifically sound ways to explain why a human society's (as in a colony) state of technology might be locked to say 1870s North America.
Background
The sci-fi Westerns that I know are the first book in the "Dark Tower" series by Stephen King and the TV series "Westworld". The former doesn't bother to explain why people use old tech in a world where more advanced societies using more advanced tech have existed beyond that they perished somehow. There's magic present here. The latter takes the approach of a Western styled theme park with androids for NPCs in what is essentially a LARPG and is scientifically accurate with no magic present.
Two possible explanations
I see two ways. One is simpler and presents an easy answer, one more complex because science plays a role. The latter I'm seeking an answer for.
As pointed out in the link above they might simply be forced by another group of people on or off the planet they inhabit to use old tech such as to keep them enslaved. The question that immediately comes to mind would be: Why force them to use 1870s tech and not say 1500s tech? A simple answer might be: For the captor's enjoyment. Same as people in Westworld pay to enter the theme park to experience the Old West (safely), the captors might treat the captive's day-to-day struggles like a reality TV show filmed by advanced drones and such.
The other and the one I'm more interested in would be that the planet's chemical composition prohibits them from evolving beyond America's state of technology of the 1870s. Say due to technological issues they can't use the technology that got them to the planet and that started the colony using frozen embryos and artificial wombs. The knowledge transfer using computers brought on the ship or capsule failed (e.g. due to them breaking) and after a couple hundred years given a colony of a big enough size they arrive at the state of technology of the 1870s. This leads to the
Question
Is there scientific reasons why they might not be able to progress from there? Is a planet scientifically possible that will be habitable and enable 1870s state of technology but which prohibits humans to progress from there due to its chemical composition?
A semi-rational scientific explanation would be just fine. I'm not sure if the Second Industrial Revolution that began in the last third of the 1800s was based on natural resources different from the ones used in the early to mid 1800s. If they are not, a scientific explanation might not exist and I would have to "go back in time" within the 1783-1920 period of the Old West myth.
I like both concepts for my world-building purposes but I'm just curious if there might be a scientific explanation that removes the need for a "prison-theory".
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/90787. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
I will propose a novel, two-pronged scientific solution. [electrical, biological] Bear with me for the first part, I will explain!
Part 1
Lots of natural chromium, lead and mercury, perhaps titanium; and virtually zero gold, copper, silver or other good conductors. That could be due to previous mining or just the natural result. It does not have to extend to the core: It could just be true of the first few miles of crust, the human-accessible part. You can help this somewhat by not having volcanoes or plate tectonics on the planet.
Reference: Metals That Are Poor Conductors.
The combination of iron and chromium is a conductor but one of the worst metallic conductors. (about 80 times less conductive than copper). Lead and mercury and titanium are also dozens of times less conductive.
So why the focus on conductivity? Naturally conductive metals were crucial in our discovery of electricity, which is far and away the single most important ingredient to getting past the 1870s. Without cheap conductivity, we don't have wires, which means no electric transmission, no electric motors or generators (they need copper windings to create electromagnets), no electric lights or communications. No air conditioning or elevators, no arc welders. No phones. (Likely no telegraph either, an 1870 element that would have to be excised).
This does not prevent them from developing hard carbonized steel (for guns, axles, etc), but carbonized steel (or stainless steel) is an even worse conductor. 
Without high natural conductivity, you also have a low incidence of natural magnets (lodestones).
High tech could obviously refine metals and produce better conductors, but if everything conductive on Planet X is more rare there than Gold is on Earth, this is a non-starter. Imagine if the copper-wound motor in your kitchen blender had to be made of solid gold; or if the power lines leading across the city to your home had to be made of solid gold.
To enable the beginning of the modern age, conductivity has to be cheap. You could still have, made from hard metal alloys (with low conductivity) steam engines, guns, farming tools, axles and so forth. Some industrialization could take place.
Part 2
This is not absolutely necessary, but you could introduce a unique biological element that helps this along; a soil bacterium ubiquitous on Planet X that metabolizes conductive metals and forms as waste molecule sized compounds that are less conductive (like iron and chromium), or perhaps oxidized, and diffused in the soil. This is to make it more difficult to refine.
IRL Aluminum was once this way on Earth:
Aluminum is one of the three most common elements found within the Earth's crust. However, until relatively recently, extracting aluminum from the bauxite ore in which it naturally occurs was a costly and difficult process. And prior to the advent of efficient chemical and electrical processes to separate aluminum from bauxite in the late 1800s [specifically 1886 and the electrolysis process], the shiny, flexible metal was more valuable than gold. [emphasis on electrical and bracketed detail by Amadeus]
It may be a little hand-wavy without further research, but IRL we have bioengineered bacteria to produce and concentrate all sorts of materials. It is reasonably plausible that bacteria could evolve that help to make metals very difficult and expensive to refine even if they are very common atoms within the crust (like aluminum would be still, if not for electrical extraction methods).
The Result
A society with metal but no economic incentives to advance to an electrical society. IRL electricity and magnetism was very much an expensive novelty in the age of Steam. If conductive metals were as costly as gold, it never would have advanced beyond that; and we would not have developed the modern age of electrical communications, broadcasting, computers, refining, HVAC, forging, and so on. We would have older methods of forging metals; and coal (and oil) could still provide heat and fuel. The steam engine would become more refined.
Yet we would be, very much, locked in the pre-lightbulb era, IMO much like 1870 (without the telegraphs).
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