I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine EEs coming up with "smoke test" independently. I've never heard it actually used in the mechanical sense (although I think I was aware of the term) but I've heard many people talk about magic smoke and electrical smoke tests. And the usage isn't quite congruent - an electrical smoke test (as I understand the term, anyway) is very specifically the act of applying full voltage to a freshly assembled and untested piece of equipment and being ready to shut off the power if anything starts to smoke (or less dramatically, seeing if any circuit breakers trip.)