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: Saturday, June 11, 2011 9:53 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] milli-Helen, milliHelen,              as a unit of beauty (1958 March 11)

On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 08:04:29AM -0400, Stephen Goranson wrote:

> 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,

May I ask how you tracked this down? In trying to find this myself
_after_ you posted this, I searched for several variants of
"milli-helen", "quantity", "beauty", and "ship", and even looking at
that one issue of the Observer, the search engine didn't turn up this
letter. I had to navigate there by hand to confirm it (and you are
right, it is there).

Jesse Sheidlower
OED
lect.org

Jesse,
I found that others had provided the citation and then checked the image to confirm it.
E.g.:
http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22quantity+of+beauty+required+to+launch+exactly+one+ship%22&num=10

Stephen

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org