milli-Helen, milliHelen, as a unit of beauty (1958 March 11)

[Stephen Goranson]

_______________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jesse Sheidlower [jester at PANIX.COM]
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 6:27 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] milli-Helen, milliHelen,              as a unit of beauty (1958 March 11)

On Sun, Jun 05, 2011 at 04:03:50PM -0400, Garson O'Toole wrote:
> Wikipedia contains an article titles "List of Humorous Units of
> Measurement" that includes a discussion of the miliHelen and connects
> the term to Cambridge mathematician W.A.H. Rushton and Isaac Asimov:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement
>
> Wikitionary has a entry that includes a first cite dated 1983 and a
> cite in 1992 in which Asimov claims that he and Mario Castillo came up
> with the term "in the early forties".
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/millihelen
>
> Historical Dictionary of American Slang has an entry on page 557 with
> a first cite dated 1969. HDAS refers to Current Slang I & II which
> notes the term is used by "Air Force Academy cadets."
>
> Here is a 1958 Milwaukee Journal cite that reprints material from England.
>
> Cite info: 1958 March 11, The Milwaukee Journal, 'He is Ugly Enough to
> Stop a Wristwatch, (Reprinted from the Manchester Guardian)

The original being:

1958 _Manchester Guardian_ 26 Feb. 5/3 A correspondent in a Sunday paper
has suggested that psychologists, intoxicated by their success in
measuring intelligence, are hoping to measure feminine beauty in precise
units. He suggests that the unit proposed will be the ‘milli-helen’—‘the
quantity of beauty required to launch exactly one ship’.

Not sure which "Sunday paper" this is itself copied from.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

Letters to the Editor
The Observer, Sunday,  Feb 23, 1958; page 8, col. 4, letter with the above quote from R. E. Dickinson (I think,
the scan is rather poor)
http://search.proquest.com/hnpguardianobserver/docview/475346069/fulltextPDF/12FE411C6F1632F9A2A/1?accountid=10598

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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