tinfoil hat (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

OED has "tinfoil hat" (without the protective qualities vs. mind rays,
just a normal hat made of metal foil) back to 1884.  I didn't try to
antedate that.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
Behalf Of
> victor steinbok
> Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 1:14 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: tinfoil hat (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: tinfoil hat (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
> -
>
> Not identical--in fact, undetermined--usage, but from 1979. Looks like
> just a generic hat made out of foil:
>
> http://goo.gl/KOMMt
> River Rats, inc
> Jean Craighead George
> Dutton, 1979 - Travel - 136 pages
> Traveling illegally at night on the Colorado River with a mysterious
> cargo, two boys are shipwrecked and must depend for survival on their
> own ingenuity and a wild boy they find living along the river.
> > Crowbar made them each an aluminum foil hat. Joe suggested they wear
their
> life jackets as
> > long as it was practical for whatever use they might make of them,
then
> stretched out in the cool grass.
>
> This seems to be just a covering made from aluminum foil, with no
> "allusion". Still, it seems this project is not finished...
>
> VS-)
>
> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 1:32 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
> <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
> >
> > The March updates for the OED include "tinfoil hat" ("With allusion
to
> > the belief that such a hat protects the wearer from mind control or
> > surveillance"), with 19 July 1986 for first citation.
> >
> >
> > _Miami Herald_ 2/19/1983 p 8C. [from Newsbank archives, no page
image or
> > column # available]
> >
> > "There is more involved in this romance than a striking violation of
> > professional ethics, though the film does concede that; along the
way, a
> > marriage is smashed, a suicidal patient is abandoned, and a derelict
is
> > turned out into the street, wearing a tin- foil hat to keep the
> > Trade-Center beams off his brain. The film nods at these scenes, and
> > then forgets them altogether. "
> >
> > Cleveland OH _Plain Dealer_ 5/16/1982 p 25 col 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."
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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