A Science Fiction Contribution to English

OED Online Word of the Day

tinfoil hat, n.

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌtɪnfɔɪl ˈhat/,  U.S. /ˈˌtɪnˌfɔɪl ˈhæt/

Etymology: <  tinfoil n. + hat n.

With sense b and uses in Compounds compare earlier tinfoil cap n. (b) at tinfoil n. Additions, and the following quotation taken from an early 20th-cent. science fiction story:

1926  J. Huxley Tissue-culture King in Yale Rev. Apr. 500 We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect, and had prepared for ourselves a sort of tin pulpit, behind which we could stand while conducting experiments. This, combined with caps of metal foil, enormously reduced the effects on ourselves.

 orig. and chiefly U.S.

 

A hat made from tinfoil.

a.  As worn at a party, celebration, etc.

1884 Life 2 Oct. 1/1 A tinfoil hat, a spangled shirt.

1947 Kokomo(Indiana)Tribune 23 July 6/3 A color note of pink and green prevailed in the appointments and favors were novelty tin foil hats and suckers.

1984  D. Unger Leaving Land 126 A television crew drove all the way from Rapid City to cover the party. Everyone wore a tinfoil hat. Everyone yelled and blew a paper horn.

1997 Times (Nexis) 10 Jan., I recall‥being on a train with A Famous Band, drinking champagne and celebrating their new Top Ten hit by wearing a very silly tinfoil hat.

 

 b.  With allusion to the belief that such a hat protects the wearer from mind control, surveillance, or similar types of threat. Frequently either extraterrestrials or the government are imagined to be the source of such threats.

1982 Plain Dealer(Cleveland, Ohio) 16 May 25/5 A Cleveland woman telephoned last year to complain that her neighbor was shooting an invisible death ray at her. She wanted the police to stop it. The dispatcher suggested she wear a tin foil hat and put tin on her windows to deflect the rays.

1986 San Diego Union 19 July d1/1 She told one reporter‥that the midgets and androids were spying on her‥. He advised her to line her attic with tinfoil and to wear a tinfoil hat. They can't penetrate tinfoil, he explained.

1994 Denver(Colorado)Post (Nexis) 23 Sept. b1 These folks stop just short of wearing tinfoil hats to shield them from evil government rays.

2007 Maximum PC Feb. 50/2 Have reason to believe ‘the man’ is watching your PC activity with a keylogger? KeyScrambler Personal will encrypt your keystrokes‥. Tinfoil hat not included.

 

Compounds

 a.  attrib. In sense b, with the sense, ‘deluded, paranoid; advocating or believing in conspiracy theories’.

1994 Denver(Colorado)Post 19 Aug. b1/5 A person can be right-wing without joining the goofball, tinfoil-hat brigade.

2005  H. Duncan Vellum 353 He's not crazy enough to think they're beaming thoughts into his head; he's not reached the tinfoil hat stage yet. But they're definitely watching him, following him.

2009  E. Emerson Cape Disappointment 158 ‘Is anybody looking into the possibility that the plane might have been brought down on purpose?’ ‘You mean a tinfoil-hat conspiracy?’

 b.  tinfoil-hat-wearing adj.

2000 Rush is Wrong in alt.fan.rush-limbaugh (Usenet newsgroup) 4 Feb., There are certain Posters on this site who will soon show up to call anyone who believes this article, kooks, loons and tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nuts!

2010  G. Beck Overton Window 81 According to network news, you're all borderline-insane, ignorant, paranoid, uneducated, hate-mongering, tinfoil-hat-wearing, racist conspiracy theorists.

The Place of Pulps in Popular Entertainment

"...[B]ut it brings us to the world of pulp magazines (which, at this time, were more easily accessible to the general reader and certainly cheaper than hardcover books).  The pulp magazine was the equivalent of television in the early years of this century.  It provided cheap and varied entertainment though with a remarkably high level of quality (although this would deteriorate in later years into formula stories with stereotyped plots)." (Gernsback Days, p.39)


1915. No paperbacks.  Public libraries in their infancy with the pendulum swinging towards edification as opposed to entertainment.  Rising levels of literacy with the growth of public schools. Pre-radio, let alone television (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio#Dates_of_first_radio_stations). Huh.


Pulps on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine

The Pulp Net
http://www.thepulp.net/index.html

History of Pulps on All Pulp: Two Fisted News from the World of Pulp!
http://allpulp.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-pulp-history-blog-debuts-on-all.html

Hil-Gle.com: Electromagnetic Home of (among other "mind rot," games, and creative newsstand fiction)  Modern Thrills:  Pulp Magazine History in All its Lurid Spleandor
http://www.hil-gle.com/index.html

Hugo Gernsback

Right now I'm reading "The Gernsback Days:  A Study of the Evolution of Modern Science Fiction from 1911-1936" by Mike Ashley and Robert A. W. Lowndes. 

There seems to be mixed opinions of Hugo Gernsback that I'm interested in researching.  On the one hand he's touted as the originator of Science Fiction - the term, the genre, and the industry.  On the other hand he's condemned for being the ghettoizer of SF and of not treating his authors well.  There's not much more distance to be inserted between these opinions, except to perhaps say that he had nothing to do with SF at all on one of these sides, which is clearly false. 

So far I've learned that he was a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and publisher, his first magazine being Modern Electrics. He was devoted to the cause of the wireless amateur, to the point of creating the Wireless Association of America (W.A.O.A.), with free membership, using Modern Electrics as its recruiting and communication organ.  When amateur wireless use started interfering with government and commercial wireless use, he used the W.A.O.A. as clout to persuade Congress to regulate wireless on his terms, by assigning frequencies and limitating transmitter power, the system still in use today, instead of by requiring licensing, which would have required many of the amateurs to find a new hobby.  The new law was called the Wireless Act of 1912.

He also used Modern Electrics to speculate about future invention and uses of technology, no matter how far out it would seem.  He created the alter ego Mohammed Ulysses Fips, the Office Boy, to present really "outrageous" ideas as humor, such as "Wireless on Saturn." 

He wrote "Ralph 124C 41+" as a 12 part serial in Modern Electrics mainly to showcase his speculations about future technologies and how they would be used.  While not much on the storytelling side, the inventions and their use are very interesting.  (I have yet to read this book, but have read excerpts and bits about it.)

As an aside, "Ralph 124C 41+" was written in 1911 and I'm having problems finding a free ecopy on line?  What's that about.  Granted, Jack Williamson republished it in 2000, but I'm happy to read it without any of his enhancements, whatever they may be, and the copyright on the original has long expired.  I guess I'll interlibrary loan (ILL) it, although I hate to spend the library's money on it, either.