Early example of the idea that power transmission poses dangers to human health.  (Evidence that exposure to the fields produced by power lines correlated with increased incidence of certain types of cancer was presented by Wertheimer and Leeper in the '80's.  So far as I know, that question remains open.  But the idea occurred earlier in fiction.)

This was the plot of Robert Heinlein's 1942 science fiction novel Waldo.  The future civilization of the story is run by "beamed" power, which one of the characters suspects is the cause of the decreasing physical strength of the general public; e.g., he points out that athletic records have been declining.  Generally these effects are small, but one character, Waldo Jones, is a genius with almost no physical strength, who lives in a space station because he is helpless in normal gravity.  (One of his inventions, remote-control units that duplicate the motions of the user's hands at another location, with strength and scale appropriate to the task, now exist in our real world, and are called "waldos" after the story; though I don't know whether the real-world invention was inspired by the book.)  The story ends with the discovery of another source of power - a supernatural force, which can replace beamed power, and which Waldo Jones also uses to attain normal, and better-than-normal, physical abilities. 

No exact quotes because I don't have a copy.  (I read my father's as a child.)  But there is a synopsis online.

Incidentally, there is a web page devoted to Ed Leeper's book on the possible dangers of electromagnetic fields.  Though I haven't looked at the book, I was impressed by the very reasonable, balanced statements on the linked page the question of risk, about the evidence, and whether it is important to do something about the problem.  (I'm curious as to whether the author is the same Ed Leeper who was a graduate student in math and a frequent Berkeley folk-dancer in the '60's.) 

I've also looked on the web for the concept of "waldo".  Searching Google for "waldo" mainly gives people with that name (e.g., Ralph Waldo Emerson).  Using the plural avoids this, but the majority of hits are then science-fiction or role-playing-game related.  But there are also a good number that are not:  with the spelling "waldos" one gets a surprising number of hits referring to the use of such devices in entertainment, in particular, in operating the Muppets, while the spelling "waldoes" gives more science-related hits. 

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