I've just watched again the 1980s NZ film The Quiet Earth starring a cast of three including Bruno Lawrence in the lead role as a scientist partially responsible for setting up what is intended to be a world-wide standing flow network but instead has a negative effect on the local forms of universal constants within a radius of several light minutes at the very least. And it's the standing flow thing that's got me wondering, was this a film that Robert Jordan ever watched? Did he use it as an inspiration for his own Age of Legends standing flows?

I can’t know, but Tesla may have been the first to create something similar. Tesla set up demonstrations of sending electricity through the air without disrupting people viewing his demonstration.

You can get close to some power substations and hold up a long fluorescent bulb and it will start to glow due to induced current today.