Mad as a Hatter’: The History of a Simile

[tinkerjack]

Physicists have used Hatterian concepts, often citing this quotation: “ ‘If you knew Time as well as I do,’ said the Hatter, ‘you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.’ ” The physicist Robert A. Millikan was quoted in 1932 as saying that the Hatter was not mad “when he gave to Time changeable, undependable, capricious qualities which we assign to personality,” and furthermore, “who is the nearer right — the Mad Hatter or the common-sense citizen?”

The Hatter is focused on time, understandably, since the Queen of Hearts has accused him of being a time-murderer. This has added heft to the theory that a top-hat wearing inventor, Theophilus Carter, was the inspiration. Mr. Carter had displayed his Alarm-Clock-Bed — which was supposed to tip the sleeper out at the correct time — at the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/weeki ... n.html?hpw