Helen (unit)

Last updated

A helen is a humorous unit of measurement based on the concept that Helen of Troy had a "face that launched a thousand ships". The helen is thus used to measure quantities of beauty in terms of the theoretical action that could be accomplished by the wielder of such beauty.

Contents

Origin

Helen leaving for Troy with Paris, as depicted by Guido Reni Enlevement d'Helene, Reni (Louvre INV 539) 09.jpg
Helen leaving for Troy with Paris, as depicted by Guido Reni

The classic reference to Helen's beauty is Christopher Marlowe's lines from the 1592 play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus , "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" [1] In the tradition of humorous pseudounits, then, 1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship.

In his 1992 collection of jokes and limericks, Isaac Asimov claimed to have invented the term in the 1940s as a graduate student. [2] In a 1958 letter to the New Scientist , R.C. Winton proposes the millihelen as the amount of beauty required to launch one ship. [3] In response, P. Lockwood noted that the unit had been independently proposed by Edgar J. Westbury and extended by the pair to negative values, where 1 millihelen was the amount of ugliness required to sink a battleship. [4]

The earliest known print citation is found in Punch magazine dated June 23, 1954 and attributed to an unnamed "professor of natural philosophy". [5]

Derived units

The Catalogue of Ships from Book II of The Iliad , which describes in detail the commanders who came to fight for Helen and the ships they brought with them, details a total of 1,186 ships which came to fight the Trojan War. As such, Helen herself has a beauty rating of 1.186 helen, capable of launching more than one thousand ships.

The "system" has been expanded by some writers, such as conceiving of negative values as measures of the ugliness required to beach a thousand ships. Writing a humorous article about the concept, David Goines considered a range of metric prefixes to the unit, ranging from the atto helen (ah) which could merely "light up a Lucky while strolling past a shipyard", to the tera helen (Th) able to "launch the equivalent of one quadrillion Greek warships and make serious inroads on the welfare of the galaxy". [6]

Theoretical physicist Thomas Fink defines beauty in The Man's Book [7] both in terms of ships launched and in terms of the number of women, on average, than whom one woman will be more beautiful. He defines one helen (H) as the quantity of beauty to be more beautiful than 50 million women, the number of women estimated to have been alive in the 12th century  BCE. [7] [8]

Applications

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Marlowe</span> 16th-century English dramatist, poet, and translator

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the preeminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac Asimov</span> American writer and biochemist (1920–1992)

Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as popular science and other non-fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Measurement</span> Process of assigning numbers to objects or events

Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events. In other words, measurement is a process of determining how large or small a physical quantity is as compared to a basic reference quantity of the same kind. The scope and application of measurement are dependent on the context and discipline. In natural sciences and engineering, measurements do not apply to nominal properties of objects or events, which is consistent with the guidelines of the International vocabulary of metrology published by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. However, in other fields such as statistics as well as the social and behavioural sciences, measurements can have multiple levels, which would include nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio scales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physical quantity</span> Measurable property of a material or system

A physical quantity is a property of a material or system that can be quantified by measurement. A physical quantity can be expressed as a value, which is the algebraic multiplication of a numerical value and a unit of measurement. For example, the physical quantity mass, symbol m, can be quantified as m=n kg, where n is the numerical value and kg is the unit symbol. Quantities that are vectors have, besides numerical value and unit, direction or orientation in space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International System of Units</span> Modern form of the metric system

The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. It is the only system of measurement with official status in nearly every country in the world, employed in science, technology, industry, and everyday commerce. The SI system is coordinated by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures which is abbreviated BIPM from French: Bureau international des poids et mesures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mole (unit)</span> SI unit of amount of substance

The mole (symbol mol) is a unit of measurement, the base unit in the International System of Units (SI) for amount of substance, an SI base quantity proportional to the number of elementary entities of a substance. One mole is an aggregate of exactly 6.02214076×1023 elementary entities (approximately 602 sextillion or 602 billion times a trillion), which can be atoms, molecules, ions, ion pairs, or other particles. The number of particles in a mole is the Avogadro number (symbol N0) and the numerical value of the Avogadro constant (symbol NA) expressed in mol−1. The value was chosen on the basis of the historical definition of the mole as the amount of substance that corresponds to the number of atoms in 12 grams of 12C, which made the mass of a mole of a compound expressed in grams, numerically equal to the average molecular mass or formula mass of the compound expressed in daltons. With the 2019 revision of the SI, the numerical equivalence is now only approximate but may be assumed for all practical purposes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metric system</span> Decimal-based systems of measurement with 7 base units defined by physical constants

The metric system is a system of measurement that standardizes a set of base units and a nomenclature for describing relatively large and small quantities via decimal-based multiplicative unit prefixes. Though the rules governing the metric system have changed over time, the modern definition, the International System of Units (SI), defines the metric prefixes and seven base units: metre (m), kilogram (kg), second (s), ampere (A), kelvin (K), mole (mol), and candela (cd).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen of Troy</span> The most beautiful woman in Greek mythology

Helen, also known as Helen of Troy, or Helen of Sparta, and in Latin as Helena, was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda or Nemesis, and the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor, Pollux, Philonoe, Phoebe and Timandra. She was married first to King Menelaus of Sparta "who became by her the father of Hermione, and, according to others, of Nicostratus also." Her subsequent marriage to Paris of Troy was the most immediate cause of the Trojan War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faust</span> Protagonist of a classic German legend

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust. The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works that have reinterpreted it through the ages. "Faust" and the adjective "Faustian" imply sacrificing spiritual values for power, knowledge, or material gain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The School of Night</span> Supposed group of poets and scientists of Elizabethan England

The School of Night is a modern name for a group of men centred on Sir Walter Raleigh that was once referred to in 1592 as the "School of Atheism". The group supposedly included poets and scientists Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman, Matthew Roydon and Thomas Harriot.

<i>Doctor Faustus</i> (play) Play by Christopher Marlowe

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, based on German stories about the title character Faust. It was probably written in 1592 or 1593, shortly before Marlowe's death. Two different versions of the play were published in the Jacobean era several years later.

<i>Fantastic Voyage</i> 1966 film by Richard Fleischer

Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 American science fiction adventure film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. The film is about a submarine crew who is shrunk to microscopic size and venture into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. In adapting the story for his script, Kleiner abandoned all but the concept of miniaturization and added a Cold War element. The film starred Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, and Arthur Kennedy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabethan literature</span> Written work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

Elizabethan literature refers to bodies of work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), and is one of the most splendid ages of English literature. In addition to drama and the theatre, it saw a flowering of poetry, with new forms like the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, and dramatic blank verse, as well as prose, including historical chronicles, pamphlets, and the first English novels. Major writers include William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Richard Hooker, Ben Jonson, Philip Sidney, Thomas Kyd, and Richard Barnfield.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trojan War in literature and the arts</span>

There are a wide range of ways in which people have represented the Trojan War in literature and the arts.

<i>The Ultimate Resource</i> 1981 book by Julian Lincoln Simon

The Ultimate Resource is a 1981 book written by Julian Lincoln Simon challenging the notion that humanity was running out of natural resources. It was updated in 1996 as The Ultimate Resource 2.

In astronautics, a black hole starship is the theoretical concept of a starship capable of interstellar travel using a black hole as an energy source for spacecraft propulsion. The concept was first discussed in science fiction, notably in the book Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke, and in the work of Charles Sheffield, in which energy extracted from a Kerr–Newman black hole is described as powering the rocket engines in the story "Killing Vector" (1978).

Parkinson's law can refer to either of two observations, published in 1955 by the naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson as an essay in The Economist:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coherence (units of measurement)</span> Type of system of units of measurement

A coherent system of units is a system of units of measurement used to express physical quantities that are defined in such a way that the equations relating the numerical values expressed in the units of the system have exactly the same form, including numerical factors, as the corresponding equations directly relating the quantities. It is a system in which every quantity has a unique unit, or one that does not use conversion factors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Younique</span> American multi-level marketing company

Younique is an American direct-sales company that markets beauty products. The company was founded in 2012 by Derek Maxfield, who is CEO, and Melanie Huscroft, and is headquartered in Lehi, Utah. Between 2017 and 2019, Younique was 60% owned by Coty, Inc. In 2019, Coty sold their share of the business back to Maxfield and Huscroft.

References

  1. Marlowe, Christopher. "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus".
  2. Asimov, Isaac (1992). Asimov Laughs Again . Harper-Collins. p.  200. ISBN   0060168269.
  3. Winton, R.C. (13 November 1958). "The Mathematics of Beauty". New Scientist. Retrieved 2017-01-06.
  4. Lockwood, P. (8 January 1959). "Unit of Ugliness". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 2023-09-19. Retrieved 2017-01-06.
  5. "Milli-Helen: The Quantity of Beauty Required to Launch Exactly One Ship – Quote Investigator®". 8 May 2021.
  6. Goines, David Lance (4 August 1987). "On the inefficiency of beauty contests and a suggestion for their modernization" . Retrieved 18 March 2012.
  7. 1 2 Fink, Thomas (2006). The Man's Book (1st ed.). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 44–45. ISBN   978-0297851639.
  8. Fink, Thomas. "The Man's Book". Thomas Fink personal webpage. University of Cambridge. Archived from the original on 14 October 2009. Retrieved 5 September 2011.